When JFK announced his Presidential Physical Fitness Awards, I unfortunately sucked at chin-ups. Four or five honest pull-ups were my limit, with one more leg-pumping, neck-stretching cheater thrown in at the end. But my salvation was the 600-yard run.

For this event I secretly perfected a new running technique that involved two normal length steps, followed by a bounding, energy-saving stride. I got the idea by watching antelopes on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. While evading cheetahs, the antelopes occasionally catapulted themselves into the air where they hung suspended for an unnatural length of time. I figured that was their rest step.

When my technique made me famous, I would call it the Antelope Running Technique, or ART for short (which I particularly liked with its double meaning and all). As I trained, running circles in my backyard, I could hear the sports announcers on ABC’s Wide World of Sports narrating my race:

“Leading down the final backstretch in the 800-meter finals is New Zealand’s Peter Snell. Closing quickly from the back of the pack is Lucas Parker, from the United States, employing his unique Antelope Running Technique. It may not look like ART, but that’s what they call it and that’s the result! Parker is gobbling up the track, passing Snell for the lead. The new Olympic 800-meter gold medal winner is Lucas Parker — The Antelope — from the USA!”

On the first day of gym class I was ready to unveil my new running style. But instead of taking us out on the track, our gym teacher — we all called him “Prof” — sat us down for a lecture about the importance of jockstraps. Our assignment for the following week was to purchase one. “Prof” specifically mentioned Bike as a reputable brand.

Purchasing a jockstrap at Ahearn’s Pharmacy was socially risky, because packs of girls frequented the record section, milling through the latest Chubby Checkers and Bobby Rydell releases.

I wandered up and down the aisles for so long that a matronly female clerk finally cornered me. “Can I help you, young man?” She studied me intently through her rhinestone-studded eyeglasses.

“I’m just looking, thanks,” I said, pretending to study the laxative labels in front of me.

She frowned, but didn’t move away. So I drifted around the store, pausing at denture adhesives, then wart removers. Finally, the male pharmacist behind the counter was free.

“Do you have any Bike Supporters?” I whispered.

He looked up at me and scrunched his mouth to one side, thinking. He held a yellow, Ticonderoga number two pencil between his fingers like he was holding a cigarette, and bounced its eraser on the counter. “I think we’ve put those away for the season.”

This caught me totally off guard because I didn’t know there was a season for jockstraps. He surprised me even more when he shouted over to the rhinestone eyeglass lady, “Charlene, would you go down in the basement and see if you can find one of those Bike Supporters for this young man? Look in the back corner, next to the inflatables.”

I felt my face burn as several people turned to check out the jockstrap shopper.

“Hey Lucas, what are you doing here?”

My heart stopped. It was Bethany Larson, and as usual she looked perfect.

“Oh hey, Bethany, are you buying something?”

She held up a single 45-rpm record of Chubby Checker’s Limbo Rock. “I just love this song,” she said. “Are you in line?” she asked, motioning toward the counter and the cash register.

“No, they didn’t have what I needed.”

But before I could escape, I heard the sales lady with the eyeglasses say, “I hope you really want this young man, because it took some digging.”

Bethany cocked her head to the side with a puzzled look as she stared at the woman. I spun around. In the woman’s hand was a bicycle kickstand. Naturally I purchased it on the spot (carefully circling back several days later to exchange it for a Bike Brand Athletic Supporter).

The following week, “Prof” lined us up for the start of the 600-yard run and started his stopwatch. I settled into my Antelope stride-stride-bound rhythm on the Knox Field track. I settled into third place, waiting for the two in front of me to tire from their orthodox, energy wasting gaits.

As I went by him after the first lap, “Prof” glowered at me and barked, “Parker, what the hell are you doing?”

Startled, I began sprinting conventional-style, passing both of the guys in front of me. Though I secretly attributed my blazing finish to how much energy I had saved doing the Antelope up until that point, I never dared display my new running technique in public again.

Rather than improve on running, which humans had been doing for thousands of years, I decided it might be easier to invent an entirely new sport. That’s when my thoughts drifted toward figuring out a new way to fly.

I showed up at Dondi’s back door one night with a twenty by forty-foot sheet of plastic bundled under one arm and my Woolworth’s football helmet under the other. The wind was blasting so hard it tore the aluminum storm door out of my hands, slamming it into the aluminum siding where the handle left a sizeable dent.

“What’s with the tarp?” Dondi asked.

“It’s not a tarp,” I said. “It’s a flying machine.”

“Your ass. Who’s going to fly it?”

“We are,” I said. “Grab your helmet.”

We stood at the top of the bank at Knox Field, each holding two corners of the giant plastic sheet. The sail yanked and pulled us, making great snapping sounds, as if it were an enraged beast. We ran down the bank, holding the sail high over our heads.

Instead of lifting us up, the wind catapulted us down the bank, forcing us to run at twice our normal speed. Our maiden flight ended in a twisting fall entangled in plastic, before thudding and sliding across the cinder running track below.

That night my dreams took me over Knox Field, suspended by a harness from something above that I could not see. There was no risk of falling, so it was beautiful just watching the twinkling lights below.

The next day in school I shared my dream with Dondi.

“What were we thinking?” he asked. “Trying to fly.”

“The problem is the plastic sheet,” I argued. “We need something that will hold the air better.”

“What do you mean we, Kemo Sabe?” he asked, distancing himself from future flights.

The limitations of plastic led me months later to Vrooman’s Army Surplus in Fultonville. Vrooman’s was full of so much cool military stuff it was easy to imagine you might discover an old bazooka in a dusty corner—or at the very least a live hand grenade.

I did find a silk parachute, with the lines still attached. It was a steal for three bucks. And the big wind I wanted arrived one Sunday afternoon in January. The snow on the ground at Knox Field had been thickly glazed over with ice. Sitting on a flying saucer in the northern end zone of the football field, with the silk parachute tucked under my butt, I carefully tied the chute’s lead lines to the belt loops on the front and sides of my jeans. Then, I unfurled the chute, casting it in front of me. At first nothing happened. My theory was that the wind would fill the chute, and with so little friction between the icy surface and the flying saucer, I would hit flight speed by the time I reached the spot where the football field terraced down ten or twelve feet to the level of the baseball field. If everything went according to plan, at this instant I would become airborne.

A gust snapped the chute open with a resonant “thunk” and the acceleration nearly flipped me backwards off the saucer. I hadn’t accounted for steering though, which was of increasing concern as I rocketed toward one of the steel light towers on the east side of the field. Dragging my hands and leaning my body had no effect on my direction. I could have reached out to touch the tower as I blew by.

When I dropped off the terrace to the baseball outfield I did become airborne —just long enough to lose my flying saucer. I slid toward the infield in Superman position, with the chute taut in the wind and the lead lines tied to my pants. I slammed headfirst into the chain link fence backstop behind home plate, producing a bright red checkerboard of lines on my face.

That officially ended my attempts to fly. Not that I stopped thinking about it. The same peaceful image of floating over our town kept coming to me in my dreams. It was always nighttime, the air was cool and fresh, and the twinkling lights of the town below were beautiful and reassuring. Eventually the lights grew smaller and smaller as I drifted away until everything below turned black.