Ticked

by James A. Fussell

A Young Life meeting? Young Christians who might be able to see him for who he was on the inside and not prejudge him for what he did on the outside? Yes, he was angry at God. But he remembered what his parents had said about how you knew your relationship was real if it changed. Maybe this was an opportunity for change.

  Maybe, he thought, this was God throwing him a life preserver.

  Why not? he thought. He had avoided people for so long. Jay Blair was a good friend, but he was pretty much all he had. This was his opportunity to make more healthy friendships, get the kind of spiritual guidance he couldn’t get in Mass, and get back on track. In a way, he had lost himself after the move. He needed to rebuild the confidence and emotional stability he had in Glenshaw.

  That night Jeff went to the meeting. The group read a scripture passage about friendship and loyalty and played an ice-breaking game in which you had to find five people with a name that started with the 109 letter that your name started with. He ticked, but no one made fun of him. And because he felt accepted, he ticked less anyway and let more of his personality show.

  Later that year Jeff joined Young Life and even took a two-week trip to Colorado Springs, where he rededicated his life and his service to God and others. He put the letter he wrote about it in his Bible.

  Years later he’d look back on the day he met Vicki Weigle as a day that helped change his life and helped him make it through high school. When his mother picked him up from that first meeting, he knew he had found something special.

  That night, in the darkness on the ride home, he folded his hands and closed his eyes.

  “Thank you,” is all he said.

  19

  Saved by Sports

  WHILE FINDING YOUNG Life helped Jeff’s spiritual and social life, nothing helped his Tourette’s—or his confidence—more than sports. Jeff played on the high school basketball team, ran track, and could fling a football sixty yards in the air. But nowhere was his domination more evident than while running cross-country. Before every race he would step across the starting line and glare back at his competition.

  Who thinks they can beat me today? Jeff didn’t say the words out loud, but he thought them as he stared down the other runners before moving to the starting line. Some took it as confidence. Others just thought he was cocky.

  And what if he was? With his long strides and greyhound-thin body, Jeff dominated cross-country races throughout the high school season. And he wasn’t above a little prerace intimidation. But as he paced back and forth there was something none of the other runners knew. He wasn’t trying to intimidate them. He had a bigger foe in mind.

  As the adrenaline rose in his chest, he fought to hold back an avalanche of tics. When he couldn’t, people pointed, called him names, and laughed in his face. He used it all as motivation for this moment.

  You know what? he thought as he glared back at the throng of runners edging toward the starting line moments before the race. None of you have any idea what I have to deal with. None of you! And if I can deal with this, I’m going to destroy you today!

  And then he would. Jeff was built like a racehorse. At six feet five, 175 pounds, with cut, muscular legs that seemed like they were carved from granite, Jeff ran angrily as he blew past competitors to win race after race. He captured all-city honors and had glowing articles written about him in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Each time he wasn’t just beating his competition, he was beating his tics, showing them who was boss.

  Fittingly, his success in cross-country brought in scholarship offers from across the country. In his junior year he received dozens of letters from top colleges that wanted him to run for them, including prestigious schools such as Arizona State and the University of North Carolina.

  From the time he was a boy, sports had leveled the playing field that Tourette’s had tilted. Sports came easy. In grade school kickball games he’d kick the ball so far it would get lost in the woods. He was so dominant in dodgeball his friends dubbed him “the Weltmaster,” and his gym teacher banned him from playing. For some, Jeff’s prowess at sports never made sense. Didn’t he have a movement disorder? How could he focus his twitching muscles enough to be that good?

  Actually, it made perfect sense. Tourette’s is not an inability to move but the constant desire to move. Moving was not the problem, staying still was. Sports was Jeff’s way to escape and excel. Most of the time the motion satisfied his urge to move, and the intense concentration focused his muscles and calmed his tics.

  Most of the time. He still ticked during some sports.

  Take basketball. Jeff’s parents remember one game where they watched him twitch at the free throw line for what seemed like several minutes before he could shoot. One time at basketball practice during his freshman year at Bay Village High School, a teammate named Ben, who liked to tease Jeff, had the ball at the top of the key. Suddenly he fired a hard chest pass Jeff’s way. Jeff didn’t see it because he was ticking. The ball bounced off his chest and rolled away.

  “Sorry, Matovic,” Ben said with a sneer. “I hit you right in the numbers. I’ll try to make the pass better the next time.”

  Another time the coach asked Jeff to set a pick, which means to run to a spot on the court and—while standing still—block the path of a defender so one of his teammates can get an open shot. Jeff ran to the spot, but as he tried to set the pick he could not stand still. His convulsions made it look like he pushed the defender instead, which is a foul.

  “Come on, spaz boy! Get it right,” said Ben. “We’ve only gone over this a hundred times now. Quit shaking and doing all your crazy stuff so we can get out of here!”

  But sometimes his tics actually came in handy. In the sixth grade Jeff’s friend Kevin stole the ball and keyed a two-on-one fast break in a tense night game against crosstown rival St. Teresa’s. With the score tied in the second half, Jeff was running on the right wing as Kevin fed him a bounce pass at the foul line. Jeff took the ball and streaked toward the hoop just ahead of a backpedaling player hustling to block his driving layup. But when he arrived at the basket, Jeff’s Tourette’s suddenly made him stop and tic before going up for the shot. He gripped the ball with his large hands like a vise as if throwing a chest pass and screamed “Huh! Huh!” as loudly as he could. His arms shot out wildly toward the St. Teresa cheerleaders. He didn’t throw the ball at them, but his exaggerated motions convinced them that he might. Frightened, they scattered, bumped into one another, and threw their pompons into the air. By the time he went up for the shot, the defender—unable to stop his momentum—landed on Jeff’s back as he made the shot. The referee called the other player for a foul. Jeff made the foul shot to complete the three-point play and help his team win the game.

  “Hey, Jeff,” Kevin said, “you’ll have to teach me that move someday. That was awesome!”

  But most of the time Jeff’s tics were not a factor in the sports he played. And most of the time—tics or no tics—he dominated. Especially when he got to run.

  In the spring of 1990, during the district meet in the Cleveland suburb of Olmstead Falls, Jeff’s coach came to him with a request after a Bay Village runner got injured.

  “Little switch in plans,” his coach said. “We don’t have four for the four-by-four [mile] relay. I need you to jump in there.”

  Already fatigued after running the half mile and the mile and just finishing the four-mile relay twenty minutes earlier, Jeff nodded his head. “No problem, coach,” he said. “You can rely on me. When is it?”

  “It starts in about four minutes,” he said. “Go warm up.”

  There were seven schools in the meet, but by this time only two—Westlake and Bay Village—were still alive to win the district title. Jeff had run the 400 before, but he certainly didn’t specialize in it. His coach expected him to run the final lap in the race—the all-important anchor leg. It had all come down to this race, which would determine the district champion.

  When the gun went off, Jeff forgot about his fatigue. Duri
ng the first leg, Bay Village fell a little behind, then the second racer pulled even. As the other runners finished their legs, Jeff checked out his competition and jumped up and down on the track to keep loose. By the time he got the baton, the Westlake runner had about a five-second lead. The Olmstead runner was even farther in front. He kicked quickly into top gear.

  “Turn and burn!” Jeff screamed, quoting a line from the movie Top Gun. He forgot strategy, forgot saving his “kick” for the end. He ran like a man possessed, full out, as fast as he could go. If he wanted the title, he had to pass those runners, and it was going to take everything he had.

  At the 300-meter mark Jeff had pulled to within 10 meters of the Westlake runner. The Olmstead Falls runner was still another five meters in front. But Jeff was gaining on them—fast. He gulped air and dug deep.

  A hundred meters for the title, he thought. He reached back and asked his body for more. He knew he was going to break his own record. But how much would he have left at the end?

  Everything hurt. His lungs burned. He thought about all the times Tourette’s had limited him and stopped him from doing the things he wanted. Not this time, he thought. He ran as fast as he could.

  And then he ran faster. “This is my one hundred,” he said. “You’re not taking this from me.” With twenty meters left to the finish line, he blew past the Westlake runner and then, with a final lean, nipped the Olmstead Falls runner at the wire. Ecstatic, Jeff raised the baton in the air.

  “Now that’s how we do that!” he yelled, as he fired the baton hard against a fence.

  A scream went up from the Bay Village team. Everyone stood and ran toward him after he fell down from exhaustion in the grassy infield. He wore a broad smile as his teammates piled on top of him, dousing him with water and Gatorade while yelling “Champs! Champs! Champs!” Jeff had shaken off his fatigue to run the anchor leg in 49.8 seconds, his personal best.

  After getting up, he saw his father in the stands. Jim Matovic looked at his watch and shrugged as if to say, “I don’t know how you did that.”

  Jeff loved to run. When his tics became unbearable he would run around the block. It wasn’t a jog, it was a full sprint designed to release stress, pain, and anger. When he was done he’d take a moment to catch his breath, and then do it again.

  “You know what?” he’d say to his Tourette’s. “I still have more. And I’m going to beat you! I’m going to beat you down to the ground!”

  As he ran he would talk to his tics, cursing and calling them vile names that would have shocked his parents. The sprinting did double duty. While it exhausted him, it also sapped the power from his tics. And in a way it empowered him to think that he could handle anything his tics could throw at him.

  His running paid dividends in other ways as well. As a senior he qualified for the state championships hosted at Ohio State University by running a 4:24 in the mile. His father went with him to watch, and even took a lap with him around the Ohio State track.

  While he was the best at running, Jeff excelled in all sports. He could throw a baseball so hard it would leave seam impressions in a catcher’s mitt. And as good as he was at baseball, he was even better at football.

  One fall day while waiting for his cross-country coach on the track, he finished his stretching and then grabbed a football to play catch with one of his teammates, Bryan Putnam. Jeff pretended to take a snap from center.

  “Putnam goes deep,” he said as he took a three-step drop and launched a fifty-five-yard bomb that hit his friend in stride.

  Nearby he heard the grunts and hard hits of football practice. After a while Coach Kaiser, the varsity football coach who also coached Jeff in track in the spring, noticed the power and precision in Jeff’s tight spirals. After making the lineman run wind sprints, he walked over to greet him. “So what are your goals for cross-country this season?” he asked.

  “I’m looking to take my team to the state meet in Columbus again, and place individually as an All-Ohioan,” Jeff said.

  The coach nodded, then looked Jeff squarely in the eye. “I saw you throwing that football around,” he said. “Why haven’t you tried out for the football team?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeff said. “I guess it’s because I’ve never played organized football and I’d be way behind the learning curve.”

  The coach leaned in closer. “How would you like to skip cross-country and be my starting quarterback?” he said. “I’ll get you up to speed on the playbook after and before school. And with your grades, I know you’re a smart guy, so the learning process won’t be that hard for you. Whaddaya say?”

  “I don’t know, Coach,” a shocked Jeff said. “I’ve already committed to my team in cross-country, and I’m involved in so many other things, including hoops in the winter and track in the spring.”

  Just then, Denny Sheppard, the cross-country coach, grabbed Jeff by the arm and pulled him aside. He glared at Coach Kaiser with a hint of a smile. “You’re not getting my star runner to play on that field,” he said. “I’ve already recruited him.”

  I LOVED HEARING about Jeff’s passion for sports. I understood exactly how they made him feel, because they made me feel the same way.

  Sports were my refuge too. In many ways my life was defined by sports. I always felt better when I was moving. I played baseball, basketball, football, racquetball, and golf. I batted tennis balls against the walls of my house and threw SuperBalls against the walls of my school. I played catch with my friends and with my father. Growing up in the 1960s, I won the Presidential Physical Fitness Award every year I was eligible. It was a big deal back then and a great source of pride. This was a time in America when awards still meant something. They weren’t given out like cups of water. The standards were high, and you had to earn it. And when you did you could be justifiably proud of yourself—and I was.

  I don’t mean to brag, but with no false modesty, I was an exceptional athlete. People could mock me, tease me, laugh at me, point at me, call me names, or make jokes behind my back. But when it came to picking teams for a sport, they knew they’d better pick me high, or I would make them pay. For a small guy—five feet nine and a half—I once recorded a forty-inch vertical jump. I could dunk volleyballs and block the shots of people half a foot taller than me. In football I was so quick that often no one on the other team could touch me, let alone catch me. I would dart and juke my way through crowds again and again to score multiple touchdowns.

  I never seriously went out for football because of my Tourette’s. I simply hated to have anything on my head, and couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

  In high school I did 250 sit-ups a night. It gave me rock-hard abdominal muscles and even helped improve my self-esteem. One day a classmate heard me talking about the tightness of my stomach.

  “If your stomach’s so tough, why don’t you let me hit you as hard as I can?” he asked.

  “OK,” I said, tightening my stomach and putting my hands on my hips. “Go ahead.” The teacher was late that day, and the whole class watched. The intensity of the situation helped me focus and temporarily blocked my tics. The guy who hit me was much larger than I was. He reared back with his right arm and hit me dead in the middle of my stomach with a savage punch.

  Thwwack!

  His large fist bounced off my powerful stomach muscles. I didn’t move or react. An “Ooohh” purred through the classroom.

  “OK,” I said. “Now let me hit you.”

  When he refused I gained an important measure of respect—both from my classmates and from myself. I might have been the weird kid who shook his head. But I was also the amazing athlete with the rock-hard abs. Like Jeff, success in sports saved me and gave me the confidence to conquer other challenges in my life—like college.

  After graduating from high school in 1976, I enrolled in the University of Nebraska, the school where most of my friends were going. And Jeff? While he could have attended many schools out of state, in 1991 he chose John Carroll Universi
ty, a Jesuit school in the Cleveland suburb of University Heights. With his Tourette’s as the wild card, it was critical to remain close to home, and Carroll was only forty-five minutes away from his parents’ house. Besides, the college offered him scholarships, his father had gone there, and it was an excellent school. In an effort to better understand himself, he majored in psychology. There was only one problem: his Tourette’s. As he grew older, it grew stronger. And unfortunately John Carroll didn’t offer a class in surviving intractable pain.

  That he’d have to learn on his own.

  20

  “God Bless You, Jeff Foxworthy!”

  STAGGERING IN THE middle of his dorm room, Jeff grimaced and then doubled over in pain. It was hard to think, and even harder to breathe.

  This was bad. It felt as if Hulk Hogan had him in a leg lock and was crushing him like a walnut. But it wasn’t just the pain. For five agonizing minutes he had ridden out a brutal explosion of tics. These were no ordinary twitches—they were sustained and powerful jerks, the kind of dangerous tics that could fling you around a room like you were nothing. Unable to stop the lurching spasms, he banged his knuckles, bruised his shins, and sliced open his forearm on the sharp corner of a wooden dresser. As he desperately sought to protect himself against more serious injury, he reached out with his long arms and hugged the base of his wooden desk.

  But even that couldn’t keep him anchored. He had become his own earthquake. As violent full-body tremors sent him stumbling through the room, they took the desk with him. Items flew off the desktop and skittered across the tile floor—ballpoint pens, a John Carroll coffee mug, his wallet and keys. Heavy textbooks slid off the edge and thumped him on the side of the head.

  “Please, God,” he cried.

  Losing his grip on the desk, he tried to stand. He wobbled like a drunk before another explosive tic threw him hard onto a multicolored area rug. Too tired to get back up, he lay in a pool of his own sweat and flopped on the floor like a 170-pound fish out of water. Bouncing high off the ground, he repeatedly smashed his head and his tailbone onto the floor. The only thing worse was when the bounces flipped him over and he began slamming his face into the floor.