Give me Xbox now, still, instead of toolbox or tacklebox and—with my created boxer, pixelated— I will bang the faces of shit-talkers because I was not ready myself years ago to be disgraced by the fisticuffs cementing our high-school hierarchies. Yet, after athletic P.E., unpadded, we gathered for the daily rehearsal of our manhood myth encased in the cage of the football stadium’s aluminum bleachers. But I only refereed. My fingers were the blurry ten-count. Standing, there, did not depend on how incessantly you could mash buttons. More that your hands rumbled when socked. We stood like tackle dummies. We did not clap or console. We staggered like foals. We flung our fists like joysticks. We stood quick, or tried, no matter how battered. We rematched because blood meant risk. Each brought a clean change of clothes. When it was done, one of us uncoiled the hose.