Unless you live under a rock or have recently emerged from a long coma, you are probably at least peripherally aware that this year's Super Bowl is taking place in my hometown of Houston.

This hasn't happened in many years, and the city fathers are understandably anxious, wanting to put our best foot forward in spite of the painfully obvious prejudices evinced by the media talking heads from the other two coasts. To hear most of them talk, you'd think Houstonians had just recently swapped out horses and buggies for cars.

The fact is, Houston is a very modern city. Granted, our citizenry is having trouble grasping the concept of not driving directly into the path of fast-moving light rail trains, but we're getting there ... or at least the dumbest ones are getting removed from the gene pool.

But all that aside, the most important part of any city (besides the food, and we've got plenty of that) is the people. And if there's one quality Houstonians have over any other big city, it's friendliness. How can you be ill-tempered when there's such ready access to guacamole and margaritas?

I decided to put my effort where my mouth was and become an official Super Bowl volunteer. I was hoping for something cushy like airport or hotel greeter duty, but I ended up in the large pool of people picked to work the NFL Experience, the gigantic amusement park/autograph session/merchandising effort put on by the NFL and various corporate sponsors that runs for a week or so before the game.

There is just about everything imaginable, from punt, pass and kick games to 40-yard dash races, tackling drills and even a "locker room" where kids can try on real NFL equipment.

I signed up for three shifts, and drew Saturday, Sunday and a long Wednesday night shift during a private party. On Saturday, after the usual milling about, filling out forms and getting rah-rah speeches from an annoying little man who couldn't get the microphone out of his mouth, we marched off to pick our assignments. I ended up on "The Big Move," probably the most physically demanding of the events.

The idea: a four-wheeled steel cart with a blocking dummy affixed to each end is pushed down a short course. The contestant then switches ends and pushes the cart back. Simple, eh?

It sure is. And it's why I'm sitting here today with a blossoming black eye, a back torqued to the point of snapping, and aches and pains in places I wasn't even aware were equipped with nerve endings.

You see, human beings are by nature competitive. This, incidentally, is why those "we don't keep score, everyone just has a good time" soccer leagues are idiotic. The kids keep score.

This competitive spirit comes out at the oddest times, but given a natural outlet like a race, especially a race involving anything on wheels, and the spirit of competition rises in full flower. In this case, that flower would be the rare and exotic Bruise Flower of the deepest Amazon, famous for its purple and yellow hues.

It's not the contestants who get bruised and battered, of course. That wouldn't be hospitable. It's we volunteers, who have to catch and stop the careening, dummy-laden carts using arms, shoulders and body-blocks. Now, to be fair, most competitors were the decent sort. They'd try to slow the carts down as they reached each end of the course, minimizing the impact. However, there were four sets of people who, over my three days, I learned to dread:

Little Tanks

Dad's got the camcorder fired up along the fence, and Junior, with his shiny new sneakers and his suburban haircut, wraps his pudgy arms around the blocking dummy and kicks his toe against the Astroturf like a sprinter awaiting the gun. With a look over his shoulder, he informs that he won't be wanting my usual "courtesy push" to get started down the line.

The start is called, and away Junior goes! His little legs at first strain, then settle into a steadily building rhythm as he hurtles down the line. When he gets to the far end, he lets up several steps before the finish to swap ends more quickly.

No such luck on my end. The dummy obstructs his view of my waving arms, so he blows into me at just about top speed, which considering his size isn't TOO much, and wouldn't be bad at all if he didn't keep pushing upon first meeting resistance. It's that second push that caught me by surprise the first few times.

Young Guns

A set of three young college or high school guys, usually sporting either NFL or college T-shirts, should be a sure warning of danger to anyone involved in trying to slow down their competitive efforts. However, I assumed, to my frequent chagrin, that since they were still in school they must be vulnerable to the Voice of Authority.

I'm well-known for my ability to project the Voice with power almost equal to that of an Italian grandmother. I would turn it on full-force when instructing the young men to slow down the dummy carts at each end of the course. More often than not, it would work, especially for the winners of the races.

It was the losers, however, who were dangerous. Dejected and facing the prospect of a week or so of taunts over their loss, they would frequently stop 2/3 of the way down the course, giving the carts a final shove before walking away. The driverless dummies would then careen down the remaining course, occasionally deciding to wander over and sample the delights of other lanes or even the barrier fences.

Young Love

Again, this one was pretty obvious; but here the Voice of Authority was left powerless in the face of young love.

You see it coming, right? The boyfriend, pumped full of hormones and looking for any way to impress the apple of his eye, decides to do so by launching the dummy cart at supersonic speeds down the course. Blinded by love, he ignores such distraction and frantically gesticulating volunteers and proceeds to flex and pose post-race, his sweetie's squeals drowning out the moans of mowed-over volunteers.

Marital Discord

And now we come to the worst, the most dangerous of all competitive pairings to all within reach: the Married Couple with Issues.

Maybe he's been feeling henpecked around the house lately. Maybe she's been feeling taken for granted or patronized. Whatever the simmering resentments, at my call of "GO!" they boil over and anyone in the cart path is fair game.

I tried several ploys to get them chuckling, to defuse the tensions. One just about cost me my left leg: I half-stood on the husband's cart, ostensibly to give the wife a head-start. Rather than play along, hubby slammed his shoulder into the dummy with all his might, bending my knee at an angle normally seen only on those "most painful sports video" shows.

It was such a cart race that is responsible for the shiner I now sport on my left eye. A thin, even frail-looking young woman proved to be FAR stronger than she looked as, with a wail that would have dumbstruck a banshee, she launched herself down the course. She slowed the cart properly at the far end, but that was only because she'd noticed it was a faster way to get around it and started back up toward me. I got no such break, and my reaction time was just THAT much too slow to keep the dummy from catching my glasses, driving the frame into my eye socket with Tyson-like force.

So, you may ask, would I do it again, given the chance?

You bet your newly purchased cowboy boots I would, stranger. Because for every one set of rampaging, poorly steered dummies there were 10 piloted by sisters joyously beating brothers for the first time, moms and dads "racing" their offspring and letting them win and every other sort of happy sets you could imagine.

Now, if we can just get some remote-controlled brakes on those cart wheels...

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Previous Stories:

• Jan. 23, 2004: I'm Eating, Here!
• Jan 16, 2004: Disturbing The Peace
• Dec. 27, 2003: The Weird Year In Review
• Dec. 12, 2003: Time's Running Out!
• Dec. 5, 2003: Gone Fishing
• Nov. 21, 2003: Weird: Revolutions
• Nov. 7, 2003: Fattening UP The Menu
• Oct. 31, 2003: Going Ghost Hunting, Part 2
• Oct. 24, 2003: Going Ghost Hunting, Part 1