The Wrong Helmet

I grew up in a lower middle class, Midwestern neighborhood outside of St. Louis, Missouri in the 1960s and ’70s, where imagination was the most valuable possession that one had.  Money for us was in short supply compared to kids who grew up in the upper-middle-class and above.  The use of sticks as swords was commonplace, the prized possession was the straightest stick.  You spent your days doing things of the imagination, adventure or just plain old naughty things that you shouldn’t do, pushing the envelope of getting caught.  However, there was one thing that always seemed to be on the agenda—backyard sports.  Baseball, football, basketball (when someone had a hoop in their driveway or yard) or even soccer once in a while.  This was the time for your imagination to run wild while pretending to be your favorite player or team.

During the early 1970’s pro football was making its move to become the most popular sport in America.  Many great stars were emerging and the corporate behemoths (never to miss a trick) began capitalizing on the images of star players and team logos.  The ultimate prize for youthful fans of the sport was a helmet of your favorite team.  At that time St. Louis had the football Cardinals (not to be confused with the baseball team), they were a team that had some memorable moments but never dominated.  But that didn’t matter they were still our team.

Every football team had a distinctive helmet that all young fans wanted a replica of, and as I mentioned earlier, dollar chasing corporations were happy to oblige.  So, the Cardinal helmet was the one found on the shelves in most of the St. Louis area toy and athletic stores.  The helmet was white in color with a sticker of a menacing cardinal on it (consider that image for a moment).  It was the pinnacle of every young backyard football players’ dream to have a helmet with the logo of their favorite team.

Once one kid got a helmet, every other kid wanted one.  This was certainly the case with the gang that I hung with.  One by one they all begged their parents with the pleading of someone who needed a kidney and by Christmas of 1968, most of them had received the prize.  My cousin whom I grew up with and am actually closer to than my own brothers had also gotten his white helmet with the red cardinal sticker symbolically glued on it as a Christmas present.  So that left me as the only non-cardinal-helmet owner and destined to be the backyard water boy.  Without that helmet I was faced with being on the sidelines because once all my gang got helmets, they thought they were battering rams, lowering their heads and charging.  Without your own helmet, you were defenseless and certainly crazy if you tried to play without one.

So, it was my turn to plead like a street beggar who had not had a piece of bread in days and secure my own Cardinal helmet.  After many attempts of pleading and commitments to a years’ worth of chores, my parents agreed to get me a Cardinal helmet for my birthday.  My birthday came after the holidays on January 29,1969 (remember these dates).  So, as I had blown out the candles on my birthday cake, I was ready to open the only wrapped box that I would receive that day.  As I began tearing off the paper with the same excited zest of someone awaiting the reading of an Academy Award envelope, my excitement turned to confusion.  As each inch of stripped away paper began to reveal its hidden content, I started seeing the color red (the color of the helmet, not my anger), then an arrowhead emblem became visible on the sides of the helmet (now it was anger).  As I completed the task of removing the paper, I was momentarily stunned— “It’s a Kansas City Chief helmet!”

How could this be?  I don’t live in Kansas City, I live in St. Louis damn it!  I am a football Cardinal fan, not a Chiefs fan.  Wait, maybe we can go back to the store, they packaged the wrong helmet!  Surely this was a mistake, my parents aren’t dumb, ok, maybe they didn’t finish high school, but they know the difference between a cardinal and an arrowhead, or red versus white.  For me it was foreshadowing of the never-ending shopping nightmares I would experience all the way through my adulthood.  It just seemed too simple of a request for it to have gone so wrong.

But the story only got worse, imagine showing up to the next backyard football game with a red helmet and not a white one.  Then to add insult to injury, the helmet had the logo of another team, not our beloved team but a team 400 miles west of where we lived.  Well, the teasing began, and it was unrelenting.  The insults ranged from “traitor”, “idiot” to “you’re not our friend”.  Now, while these kinds of cheap shots are not uncommon at that age, and it usually doesn’t take much to be on the receiving end of them, but these shots were painful.  I would be stuck with that helmet and the ugly stigma that went with it until high school.  Never-the-less, I was able to play football with the gang, but I swear that red helmet became a bullseye on my otherwise defenseless body.

Now before you file this story under the pity party heading, this unfortunate dilemma has a much different ending than you are expecting.  Again, the year was 1969 and the Kansas City Chiefs had a good season and went on to become champions in the AFL and made it to the 1970 Superbowl.  After the complete domination of the hapless and seemingly confused Minnesota Viking football team, the Kansas City Chiefs were Superbowl champions.  Suddenly, if by fate, I held the championship in my hands and with it the bragging rights of our backyard football league.  For that one moment, I was bigger than all the rest.

As it had turned out, my parents were in earnest in their attempt to buy a Cardinal helmet for me, but fate stepped in and changed my destiny as a football fan.  The store where my helmet had been purchased had run out Cardinal helmets and my mother was determined not to come home without a helmet.  So, she resorted to the only option left in stock—a Chief’s helmet.  The thought process here must have been that any helmet was better than no helmet.  Surely, I would be content with just having a helmet, it didn’t matter what team or color it was right?  Hell, it could have been pink—right?  At the time I didn’t see the logic to that philosophy. But with a little help from fate it all worked out in the end.

What makes this story so significant today is that the Kansas City Chiefs picked up some kid with a wild hairdo by the name of Mahomes.  This young man, who not only destroyed every rookie record known to football but on the 50^th anniversary of my helmet debacle also led the Chiefs to another championship.  Why is this so important to me today?  Because I have been a Kansas City Chiefs fan ever since that fateful day of opening a package with the wrong helmet in it.  And I will remain a Chiefs fan until my last day.

Sometimes fate has a strange way of changing our lives, and there is certainly a silver lining in every cloud that may stand in your way.  I no longer have that old helmet, it was lost somewhere along my life’s journey, however, after the most recent Chief’s Super Bowl win my daughter sent me a small replica helmet.  I would love to take it and visit my old back yard friends and show them that once again—I rule!

Talk to Ya Later

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2020 All Rights Reserves