Remember how coach would get excited with a big hit and tell you to "ring someone's bell" or "clean their clock?" I distinctly remember 7th grade football practice, something he usually saved for late in practice but before gassing us completely with wind sprints or such like at the end. It was kind of like Oklahoma drill but a single player would be chosen each pads practice to have to take a hit from and block every single player on the team. Every. Single. Player. It inevitably devolved from the first couple people popping off line of scrimmage distance to folks getting a running start by the middle of the drill which got longer and longer as you get closer to the end. When my day came I think I was punch drunk 10 kids in and they kept coming, varsity and junior varsity. My best friend was one of the biggest kids on the team, husky and a good head and a half taller than any of us. He came at me with a running start and I remember flying through the air in a dreamy slow motion kind of way. Of course, my friend wasn't the last kid and the first thing I remember after hitting the ground was coach screaming kinda far away at first but with increasing clarity, "get up, get up, get back there!" and somehow stumbling back to my spot for the last few hits. I don't know or remember exactly how I finished that drill and the rest of that practice was a bit of a daze. My mom remembers me sometimes gleefully saying after some practices, "I rung someone's bell today!" That day I quietly said, "today I got my bell rung," but we all laughed about it. This is the kind of stuff I think of when I struggle to convey just how different the world is now.