Page 51 of Colliding with Ten

“Well.” She gestured with her chopsticks. “It sounds like you’re bragging about knocking people unconscious. Lights out, you know? Like they kept chanting when you knocked me over.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “That’s not what lights out means.”

“What does it mean then?” she asked.

“In football, playing lights out means you’ve dominated your opponent.”

“That’s it? It doesn’t mean that you cut someone’s lights out by knocking them around on the field.”

“No, not in a literal sense. Where are you getting this from?

“I went online and read some stuff. It seemed like you were into it.”

“You think I gave myself that name?”

“You didn’t?”

“Hell no.” I leaned back. “Who do you think I am, The Rock?”

She laughed. “Okay. But you do play into it. You do the thing.”

“The thing?”

She mimicked my on-field gesture with one hand, using two fingers to touch the temple, then flicked it down, as if flipping an imaginary light switch. Her impression was very good. She’d practiced it, or at least paid close enough attention for it to stick.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I do it. But it doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

She arched a brow. “So it’s not about setting up an opponent just to knock them down?”

“Nope.”

“Not about being aggressive?”

I laughed. “You really think I’m that guy?”

She smiled, unapologetic. “I mean, the internet does too.”

“Well, actually, the internet seems to think that I have a pet alligator called Blitz just because I played college ball in Florida.”

“Do you?”

I smirked. “Maybe.”

“Oh, my God.”

I laughed again, shaking my head. “Okay, fine. No, I don’t own a gator. And no, Lights Out isn’t anything violent.”

She folded her arms on the table, intrigued now. “Then what does it mean?”

I paused for effect. “When I was in college, my coach said I had a switch in my head. One minute, I’d be on the bench telling jokes. The next, I’d be called up, and it was as if the lights had flipped. I was locked in.”

She nodded and listened, not merely waiting for her turn. “Right, but doesn’t that mean you’d be turning the lights on, not off?”

I smiled because she was right. “Yeah, that’s what I said. But during one game, senior year, a weird thing happened. We were in the fourth, and the crowd was going nuts. I read the defense and called an audible. They snapped the ball, I dropped back, and threw deep to my receiver.”

She leaned in, elbow on the table, chin in her hand, waiting for me to finish. “And?”

I paused again. “And right as he caught it, the lights went out.”