Wednesday, 30 June 2004 | Bonecrusher

The only celebrities in my small town were community celebrities—the coach of the university basketball team, a senator, a news anchor. It was hard to get excited about seeing those people, beyond the first pang of recognition: I've seen that person before; I know that person's name; I know something about that person, who knows nothing about me. OK.

During my seventh grade year, however, one "real" celebrity did move to our town: Bonecrusher Smith. I had never heard of him, of course, as I'd never watched any boxing, but I was told he'd been the "Heavyweight Champion of the World" until Mike Tyson came along, and that impressed me enough.

Once, during the sole week that my friend Steph and I went early morning jogging in her gated community, we passed him going the opposite way. "That was Bonecrusher Smith," I told her. He was easy to spot, because he was the only black man living in that community. It seemed only minutes before he passed us again, even though the circle we were tracing was two miles long. Bonecrusher, not surprisingly, was in good shape.

His daughter went to my school, but I didn't know her. I only know that sometimes I would see Bonecrusher walking through the locker-lined halls, looking powerful, reserved, and out of place. One day I got up the nerve to ask him for an autograph. I handed him a folded-over piece of lined notebook paper and held out a pen. "B-o-n-e-c-r-u-s-h-e-r," he wrote neatly.

What must it be like to be known as "one who crushes bones"? I suppose the name was second nature to him by then, and even started sounding normal outside of boxing land. I wonder if he found it at all silly, handing a little white girl a piece of paper that simply said, "Bonecrusher" (which, in any other context, would be absurd).

I thumbtacked it to my wall when I got home.