hey guys, someone once wrote me this memory from school involving an athletic cup forced on a victim's face:
I attended a small, rural Pennsylvania combination junior/senior high school, grades 7 to 12 all in one building. I was also a student manager for the basketball team: keeping stats, cleaning game balls, getting the ref's refreshments at half time, etc. Our gymnasium was also the school auditorium, and the boy's locker room was on the second floor above and behind the stage area. There was a stairwell to the side of the stage to get to the boy's locker room, and after practice the varsity and junior varsity players would herd en masse through the narrow doorway into the hallway leading to the stairwell. This was a secluded spot, and the coaches would wait until everyone had left the gym so that they could turn out the lights and lock up the gym before going upstairs to the locker room. Consequently, the players would be on their own in the stairway or locker room for maybe 5 minutes until the coaches got there.
Early on in these practice sessions, the senior players had singled out Michael, a smaller, non-athletic-type freshman misfit who really had no business trying out for the team, but who was there nonetheless, and picked on him at every opportunity. As we headed into the stairwell after one practice, five or six of the seniors and juniors surrounded Mike, and grabbed him, making sure that the coaches were busy and that the door was closed from the gym into the stairwell. As the other players lined up along the railing going up the steps, they stripped the geek boys tee shirt and practice shorts off, leaving his Chuck Taylor hightops, sweatsocks and jockstrap on him. He was pinned down on the cold painted cement floor. They were all teasing Mike, telling him he looked pale, asking if he was scared, commenting on his total lack of any need for a jock, etc. The poor kid was obviously scared shitless. After maybe 30 seconds of this Andy, the ringleader, reached into his shorts and pulled out a nut cup, which he did not normally wear, but that he must have worn for this practice, and told geek-boy that they were going to have to administer oxygen to make him feel better. The cup was, of course, the old plastic type: shallow white ten hole model, with the greenish blue rubber gasket around the edge, ripe from two hours straddling Andy's sweaty crotch in anticipation of the planned attack. Andy placed it over Mike's nose and mouth, laughing and telling him to take deep breaths. Mike held his breath as long as he could, and finally gasped so loudly that everyone heard him. The audience gave the desired response and all laughed, and Andy continued to hold the cup in place, encouraging Mike to take several more deep breaths. Knowing he had no choice, Mike complied, and the lookout finally said the coaches were headed for the stairwell, so he was left go. We all scampered upstairs, and apparently the coaches never did find out about Mike's hazing. Even if they did, in those days this sort of thing was not unusual, and as long as no physical harm was done it was sort of passed over and left go.
To his credit, Mike stayed on the team for the whole year, and continued to take a lot of shit from pretty nearly everyone. He didn't go out for the team the next year, though. Glad I wasn't the one to get picked on, but then I was a good little manager who always took care of the players' every need.