Thursday afternoon football

Kirk Ericson | Sep 23, 20210

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Someone on Mary M. Knight's six-man football team must have missed a block because his teammate yelled at him after the play was whistled dead.

"Jiminy Christmas!" the teammate hollered. "Are you scared of him?"

I laughed. "Jiminy Christmas!" That's a weird oath for a teen to use in the year 2021. What else lives in that boy's vocabulary? "Ye gods?" "By crikey?"

That comment carried easily across to the sidelines and across Mary M. Knight's football field, a field bordered on three sides by forest, during last Thursday's game between the Owls and the team from the Washington School for the Deaf in Vancouver. The Vancouver school's team nickname is the Terriers, so it was the Owls vs. the Terriers. The birds won 42-2.

I have a confession. As a newspaper columnist and as a human, I have to work hard to pay attention to what I know I should pay attention to. It's not a case of attention deficit disorder. It's more like attention interest order.

For this story, I tried to pay attention to the novelties of six-man football and how a team of deaf kids manages to navigate a football field. I interviewed people and I stood along both sidelines for more than an hour, listening, watching and taking notes.

I learned from the mother of a 14-year-old Terrier, Cyrene Elliott of Kingston, that "hearing impaired" is a derogatory term, and I learned from the referee, Terry Simmonds, that "Players (from the School for the Deaf) are extremely oriented toward sportsmanship. They'll help their opponents up. They'll pat them on the back for making a good play."

But when it came time to write, that lanky kid yelling "Jiminy Christmas" near the top of his lungs wouldn't go away. He was an obstacle, like the Terrier tackler who didn't get blocked.

I had questions. I found the origin of the phrase "Jiminy Christmas," which made me remember how those two words appeared before my 12-year-old self when I was the catcher for the William Main Realty baseball team in Spokane.

Here's what I found from the "Old Farmer's Almanac:" " 'Jiminy Christmas' is a direct reference to Jesus Christ and dates to 1664, when it was first recorded as "Gemini," a twist on the Latin phrase Jesu domini. The name of the Walt Disney character Jiminy Cricket was probably based on this phrase."

And this from the Oxford English Dictionary: "Used as a mild oath or exclamation."

And finally this from Quora.com: " 'Jiminy Christmas' is an English-language example of what's called a minced oath, a way to avoid referencing the sacred or profane, such as God or Jesus ... It's an age-old way to dance around what throughout history has been considered blasphemous."

That Mary M. Knight player says "Jiminy Christmas" because it's an acceptable way to swear around gridiron authorities.

When I was a 12-year-old catcher in Little League, I once badly underthrew second base during an attempted steal. I stared at second and said, "Jesus!"

The umpire got on me instantly. I claimed I had said "Sheesus!" but he knew. He called timeout just so he could make a big show of walking over to my coach and my father to report my blasphemy. He told them I'd be tossed if I did it again. "Jesus Christ Superstar" was huge at the time, so the ump might have been one of those guys.

After the inning was over, I walked back to the bench. My dad gave me the look. The coach, good old Coach Soukup, gave me this advice: "Don't worry about it. Just practice saying, 'Jiminy Christmas.' They can't toss you for that."