Gait thrust lacrosse head. Gait Lacrosse Shafts: A Comprehensive Guide to Performance and Durability

What are the key features of Gait lacrosse shafts. How do different Gait shaft models compare in terms of performance. Which Gait shaft is best for different positions and playing styles. How durable are Gait lacrosse shafts in game conditions. What are the pros and cons of Gait shafts compared to other brands.

Table of Contents

The Evolution of Gait Lacrosse Shafts: From Titanium to Chromium

Gait has long been a respected name in the lacrosse equipment industry, known for producing high-quality shafts that blend performance with durability. Over the years, Gait has innovated its shaft technology, moving from titanium-enhanced alloys to chromium-enhanced designs.

The Gait 803 Titanium Enhanced shaft was one of the company’s earlier popular models. Available in both defense and attack lengths, this shaft offered a great balance of strength and weight. The titanium enhancement provided excellent durability without adding unnecessary bulk, making it a favorite among players at various skill levels.

As technology advanced, Gait introduced models like the Ice and Anarchy, which featured chromium-enhanced alloys. These newer materials allowed for even better strength-to-weight ratios, giving players the advantage of a lightweight shaft that could still withstand the rigors of intense gameplay.

Gait Shaft Models: A Breakdown of Features and Benefits

Gait offers a variety of shaft models, each designed to cater to different player preferences and positions. Here’s a closer look at some of the most popular Gait shaft models:

Gait Ice: Known for its lightweight design and superior grip, the Ice shaft is a favorite among attackmen and midfielders who prioritize quick stick handling.
Gait Silencer: This model features an etched surface for improved grip in all weather conditions, making it ideal for players who compete in various environments.
Gait Anarchy: The Anarchy shaft is recognized for its unique half powder, half smooth grip design, offering players versatility in their handling preferences.
Gait DB 6000: A durable alloy option that provides excellent value for players at all levels.

How do Gait shafts compare to other brands in terms of performance?

Gait shafts are often compared favorably to other top brands in the lacrosse industry. They are known for their excellent balance of lightweight design and durability, which is crucial for players who need to make quick movements while also withstanding checks and impacts during play. While personal preference plays a significant role in shaft selection, many players find that Gait shafts offer comparable or superior performance to other leading brands, often at a competitive price point.

Choosing the Right Gait Shaft for Your Position and Playing Style

Selecting the appropriate Gait shaft depends largely on your position on the field and your individual playing style. Here are some general guidelines:

Attackmen and Midfielders: Opt for shorter, lighter shafts like the Gait Ice or Anarchy for improved maneuverability and quick stick skills.
Defensemen: Choose longer, more durable options like the Gait 803 Titanium Enhanced defense shaft for added reach and check strength.
Versatile Players: Consider models like the Gait Silencer, which offer a good balance of strength and handling for various positions.

Can Gait shafts be customized for specific player preferences?

Many Gait shafts can be customized to suit individual player needs. This includes cutting down longer shafts to preferred lengths, adding grip tape for enhanced control, or even removing graphics for a cleaner look. However, it’s important to note that significant modifications may affect the shaft’s warranty or legality in official play, so always consult official regulations before making major changes.

Durability and Maintenance of Gait Lacrosse Shafts

Gait lacrosse shafts are renowned for their durability, but like all equipment, they require proper care and maintenance to ensure longevity. Here are some key points to consider:

Regular Inspection: Check your shaft for dents, cracks, or other damage after each game or practice session.
Proper Storage: Store your shaft in a cool, dry place to prevent warping or material degradation.
Cleaning: Wipe down your shaft after use to remove dirt, sweat, and other debris that could affect grip or cause corrosion.
Grip Maintenance: If your shaft has a specialized grip, follow manufacturer recommendations for cleaning and preserving the surface.

How long can a player expect a Gait shaft to last under regular use?

The lifespan of a Gait shaft can vary depending on factors such as playing style, position, and level of competition. However, with proper care and maintenance, many players report using their Gait shafts for multiple seasons without significant performance degradation. It’s not uncommon for a well-maintained Gait shaft to last 2-3 years or more, even with regular use in competitive play.

The Impact of Gait Shafts on Player Performance

Gait shafts are designed to enhance player performance in several key areas:

Weight Distribution: The balanced design of Gait shafts helps players maintain control during quick movements and precise shots.
Grip Technology: Enhanced grip surfaces on many Gait models improve ball control and stick handling in various weather conditions.
Strength-to-Weight Ratio: The use of advanced alloys allows Gait to produce shafts that are both lightweight and durable, benefiting players across all positions.
Flex and Response: Gait shafts are engineered to provide the right amount of flex for powerful shots and passes without sacrificing control.

How does the material composition of Gait shafts affect their performance?

The material composition of Gait shafts plays a crucial role in their performance. Titanium and chromium-enhanced alloys offer an excellent balance of strength and weight, allowing for quick movements without sacrificing durability. These materials also contribute to the shaft’s flex characteristics, which can affect shot power and accuracy. Additionally, the specific alloy compositions used in different Gait models can influence factors such as vibration dampening and overall feel, allowing players to choose a shaft that best suits their playing style and preferences.

Cost-Benefit Analysis: Are Gait Shafts Worth the Investment?

When considering the purchase of a Gait lacrosse shaft, it’s important to weigh the costs against the potential benefits. Here’s a breakdown of the value proposition:

Initial Cost: Gait shafts are typically priced competitively with other high-end brands, ranging from $90 to $130 for most models.
Longevity: The durability of Gait shafts often means they need to be replaced less frequently, potentially saving money in the long run.
Performance Benefits: The enhanced performance features of Gait shafts can contribute to improved play, which may be particularly valuable for competitive players.
Resale Value: Well-maintained Gait shafts often retain a good resale value, as evidenced by the active second-hand market for these products.

Do the performance benefits of Gait shafts justify their price compared to budget options?

While budget options may offer initial cost savings, the performance benefits and durability of Gait shafts often justify their higher price point for serious players. The advanced materials and design features contribute to improved play and longevity, which can make them a more cost-effective choice over time. However, recreational players or those on a tight budget may find that less expensive alternatives meet their needs adequately. Ultimately, the decision depends on individual priorities, skill level, and financial considerations.

Gait Shafts in Competitive Play: Regulations and Acceptance

Gait shafts are widely accepted in competitive lacrosse at various levels, from youth leagues to professional play. However, it’s crucial for players to be aware of specific regulations that may affect the use of these shafts in official games:

Length Restrictions: Different positions have specific length requirements for shafts. Always ensure your Gait shaft meets the appropriate length for your position and league.
Material Regulations: While Gait’s alloy compositions are generally accepted, always check current league rules regarding shaft materials.
Grip Modifications: Some leagues may have restrictions on grip tape or other modifications. Verify that any changes you make to your Gait shaft comply with league rules.
Inspection Procedures: Be prepared for equipment checks before games, ensuring your Gait shaft meets all necessary criteria.

Are there any specific Gait shaft models that are particularly popular in professional lacrosse?

While professional players often have individual preferences, certain Gait models have gained popularity at the highest levels of play. The Gait Ice has been a favorite among professional attackmen and midfielders due to its lightweight design and superior handling characteristics. Defensemen in professional leagues have shown appreciation for the durability and reach provided by Gait’s longer shaft options. However, it’s important to note that professional players may also use custom or specially modified versions of these shafts to suit their specific needs and playing styles.

In conclusion, Gait lacrosse shafts offer a compelling combination of performance, durability, and value for players at various skill levels. From the lightweight and responsive Gait Ice to the durable and versatile Gait 803, there’s a model suited for nearly every player’s needs. While the initial investment may be higher than some budget options, the longevity and performance benefits often make Gait shafts a wise choice for serious players. As with any equipment decision, players should consider their individual needs, playing style, and budget when selecting a Gait shaft. With proper care and maintenance, a Gait shaft can be a reliable companion on the field for seasons to come, potentially enhancing performance and enjoyment of the game.

Sticks – Gait Lacrosse Shaft

Gait 803 Titanium Enhanced Men’s Defense lacrosse shaft& Warrior Revo Pro defense head. Strung. New price today for same shaft and head is about $185($130 +$55) Purchased new in 2006. Shaft is straight. Minor scratches, no dents. Shaft colors are Silver with red&yellow label. Lengths: 60″ stick) 70 ½” stick with head) Features: 803 Titanium enhanced alloy. Condition: Used Brand: Gait MPN: 803D Model: 803- Defense Gender: Men.

GAIT 803 Titanium Enhanced Men’s Attack lacrosse shaft& GAIT CHAOS Men’s Attack lacrosse head. Strung. New price today for same shaft and head is about $175($90 +$85) Purchased new in 2006. Shaft colors are Green with blue&yellow label. Shaft is straight. Minor scratches, no dents. Lengths: 30″ stick) 40 ½” stick with head) GAIT CHAOS attack head. Strung. Ideal for increased ball retention and catching ability. This Gait® Chaos® men’s lacrosse attack stick features a curved sidewall. The shortened throat allows for better control, while the triple rib offers an improved weight-to-strength ratio. $85.00 list new. Orig, purchased 2006. 336.RcmdId ViewItemDescV4,RlogId p4%60bo7%60jtb9%3Fvo%7B%3Dd70f%2B%3E336-144c5d50ae4-0x105-

This 30″ shaft is barely used. However. There is a small dent towards the top of the shaft. This dent does not effect play by any means. Compare at $89.99+ at most places.

Gait-Ice Titanium-Enhanced Defense Shaft in hard to find Deep Royal Blue. Only used in practice a few times with a few superficial scratches and some minimal marks up by the top of the shaft where the head slides on. Could pass as a floor model with incidental marks. In very nice condition. As pictured. Posted with

STX Super Power lacrosse head with traditional stringing on a Gait Ice Shaft that is cut one inch short. It has black tape on the bottom of the shaft and on a few spots where I like to put my hands. The shaft and the head are used. But brand new stringing. It might be 1/2 an inch illegal.

Used but in Excellent shape Gait Silencer Removed graphics from shaft to make clean. Not game used. So so dings or dents. Gait old school shaped handle is made of titanium/chromium enhanced alloy with an etched surface for improved grip in all weather

A used 30 inch lacrosse shaft. This is a Gait Anarchy Chromium Enhanced shaft. There are some scratches and minor dents but the shaft is still straight. It is hard to tell by the pictures but the shaft has the name written across it and is stripes with a half powder and half smooth grip. The shaft does not have a butt end cap. If you have any questions then just send us a message. And be sure to check out our other items for more great lacrosse equipment. Thanks for looking!

Buy it now! We have a very lightly used edge x head with blue 10 diamond mesh. I literally only used it in one indoor game. The shaft is the og version of the gait ice. This has had a lot of love. I used it for a season of box. There are some nicks but still fully usable. Truly. A great buy!

The shaft and mesh were never used in practice or games(just to throw the ball around a few times) The head(not sure what kind) is used and dyed black but in good condition without any cracks. The shaft has some minor nicks from carrying it around and in the car. But still very very good condition. The mesh is like new and barely used. Any question. Let me know. Thanks!

Hello! This is an attack/midfield length shaft. There are no dents and only minor scratches. I have only used it in a couple of practices.

Excellent condition lacrosse shaft- no dents. Gait Ice Titanium Enhanced. Shaft is cut down from a defense pole. It is stronger than the attack/midfield version. This is one of the most popular shafts made today. Has built in upgraded white plastic endcap.

Hello up for purchase is a lot of two Gait DB 6000 alloy lacrosse sticks with heads. These sticks appear to be in very good used condition no bends or dents. One of the sticks is missing the rubber base at the end sticks measure 23 inches without the head with the head they measure 33 inches. Please feel free to ask questions thanks very much for looking!

In very good condition. Appears to only have one small dent but it is scratched up. The name has been worn off. Very fresh tape and comes with a butt end.

This is a like new lacrosse shaft that has been used less than 5 times. It is in perfect condition and is a high quality attacking shaft. I am selling it because I just received a new GAIT ICE shaft for my birthday even though I had just recently gotten this one. This stick is very light weight which makes it the perfect shaft for attackers. This stick is just what you need to elevate your game. Happy bidding!

The shaft itself has a few small dents. But nothing major. The Nike CEO head has normal wear and tear, but is not broken in any way. The head was also recently restrung.

Gait lacrosse head asylum boys defenseman mens w STX 60″ Shaft Axe 405 Gait lacrosse head asylum boys defenseman mens w STX 60″ Shaft Axe 405 in very good condition. Light wear no cracks. Green/yellow/orange head. Shipped fedex due to length. Entire length is 69 1/2″ No international bids please. Nice.

Gait TORQ Lacrosse Head | Lacrosse Unlimited

Do You Want Your Head Dyed?

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$10.00

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— Please Select –Solid One Color Fade Colored Top Fade Colored Bottom Angle Dye Colored Top Angle Dye Colored Bottom

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— Please Select –Athletic Gold Black Dark Green Kelly Green Light Blue Maroon Navy Orange Pink Purple Red Royal Vegas Gold Yellow

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— Please Select –No Yes (White Mesh) Yes (Black Mesh)

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$21.99

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— Please Select –No Lacrosse Unlimited Platinum White +

$17.00

Lacrosse Unlimited Platinum Black +

$17.00

(Out Of Stock)Stringking 3S White +

$19. 99

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$19.99

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$19.99

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$24.99

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— Please Select –1 Straight Hockey Lace & 1 Nylon 2 Nylon 2 Straight Hockey Lace 2 Straight Hockey Lace & 1 Nylon 3 Straight Hockey Lace

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Gary Gait previews 2021 Syracuse women’s lacrosse season (see schedule)

Syracuse women’s lacrosse head coach Gary Gait remembers exactly where he was when he learned that the 2020 season was getting shut down. He was on the bus at the University of Virginia, getting a call that the 7-1 team’s season was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s been a crazy 11 months of waiting and wondering when we’ll play lacrosse next,” Gait said in a virtual press conference on Tuesday.

“It seems like five years ago that that happened so much has gone on,” he later added. “We’ve done everything we can to get the team back on the field.”

The No. 3 Orange is just under two weeks away from returning to the twine for a road trip, starting at No. 5 Loyola on Feb. 20. Ten of SU’s 11 seniors from last spring are returning to the Salt City after the NCAA granted them an extra year of eligibility, including two-time first-team All-American Emily Hawryschuk, defender Kerry Defiliese, and goalkeeper Asa Goldstock.

“They want to come back and compete for a national championship and finish what they started last year,” Gait said. “… They said right on that bus ride that they were going to be back, they wanted to come back. And it turned out that I think everyone wanted to come back. They were so excited about what they had started in 2020, that they didn’t want it to end. They were willing to put their life on hold for a year and turn it in a different direction to come back.”

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Syracuse’s returning core should thrust the team into the middle of another competitive season in the ACC. Inside Lacrosse ranked seven of the eight teams in the ACC in its preseason top-20 poll, with North Carolina topping the list and Notre Dame and Syracuse coming in right behind the Tar Heels. SU has a two-game series with the Irish at home in mid-March, along with two game sets against Louisville and Boston College

North Carolina is one of many teams to benefit from the transfer wire this offseason, adding All-Americans Katie Bourque from Dartmouth and Kerrigan Miller from USC. Gait is excited to see what this infusion of talent is going to bring to the previously stacked ACC.

“I think almost every ACC program’s brought in some additional players that have come from other programs that one to play in the best conference in the country,” Gait said. “It’s going to be an amazing year for the ACC.”

Ten of Syracuse’s 15 opponents this season are ranked in IL’s top 20, including the team’s first opponent — Loyala. Gait said that that matchup was initially slated to take place at the Carrier Dome, but it had to be moved to fit with Loyola’s Covid-19 guidelines. Gait stressed that he wants to give his team the hardest schedule possible to prepare Syracuse for the NCAA Tournament.

That means travelling for eight of 15 games this season.

“That’s kind of our motto, we’ll go play anybody anywhere, and I think we proved that last year with that one crazy game against Maryland,” Gait said.

That Maryland game memorably got switched from a Friday afternoon contest at the Carrier Dome to a Saturday noon matchup in College Park because the Terrapins did not want to travel in the snow. Syracuse beat Maryland 10-5 the next day on the road, stomping on the reigning national champions.

Gait said the Orange plays every game with that same mentality, and that fortitude should help a talented lacrosse team through a challenging lstate during a hectic season.

Here’s Syracuse’s full 2021 schedule:

Feb. 20: at Loyola, 12 p.m.

Feb. 23: at Georgetown, 1 p.m.

Feb. 27: vs. Stony Brook, 10 a.m.

March 6: at Duke, 1 p.m.

March 11: vs. Notre Dame, 7 p.m.

March 14: vs. Notre Dame, 12 p.m.

March 27: vs. Virginia Tech, 12 p.m.

April 3: at North Carolina, 1 p.m.

April 10: vs. Virginia, 12 p.m.

April 13: at Albany, TBD

April 16: at Louisville, 3 p.m.

April 18: at Louisville, 12 p.m.

April 22: vs. Boston College, 5 p.m.

April 24: vs. Boston College, 12 p.m.

April 28: ACC Tournament first round

May 6: at Massachusetts, TBD

Best 7 Cheap Lacrosse Heads Reviewed & Rated

As a laxer, your lacrosse head is just not another piece of equipment for you to buy for cheap at half the price. Why? High-quality lacrosse heads help you shoot faster, and allows smooth and crisp shots. It is the equipment for you to customize, string and dye to make a statement in the field.

No matter what stage you are at, if you want to try something new or change an aspect of the game, you can begin with choosing the best lacrosse heads for your game-play.

Pro players in lacrosse shell out a fortune to afford the best lacrosse heads only to vamp up their game. In fact, some spend more money on the best-suited lacrosse heads than they spend on all other lax gears.

Read More About – Best Lacrosse Head for Middie

Both offensive and defensive players want better control of the lacrosse stick and having a high-end lacrosse stick can help you achieve the same. In this guide, we tell you all about different lacrosse sticks and how you can select that one that is suited for you. We also discuss the different types of lacrosse heads and various other factors that determine the quality of the lacrosse heads.

Let’s jump right in to know more!

Top 7 Lacrosse Heads

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Since there are so many varieties of lacrosse heads available in the market, it can make you feel lost. To help you out, here we have listed the best 7 lacrosse heads that money can buy –

1. Warrior Evo 5 Unstrung Lacrosse Head

Warrior Evo 5 Unstrung Lacrosse Head has embraced both Tilt-Tech and Loc-Throat technologies to make it more stable and to do away with shaft rattle. The head is attached to the shaft by using screws. The use of screws has made the head super stable. If you are looking for a lacrosse head that can offer a decent level of stability without making any kind of compromise on the stability front, maybe Warrior Evo 5 Unstrung Lacrosse Head is the best thing that you are looking for.

To further improve ball release, users are given an option to make proper use of its Tilt-Tech string hole design. Go for a min-low pocket with this lacrosse head because a deep pocket can have adverse impacts on your ability to control the ball. Warrior Evo 5 Unstrung Lacrosse Head is best suited for attacker and offensive midfielders.

2. Maverik Lacrosse Tank Universal Unstrung Head

Maverik Lacrosse Tank Universal Unstrung Head offers superior rail support and the credit goes to its 4-Strust Design. Best suited for defensive players, Maverik Lacrosse Tank Universal Unstrung Head offers unmatchable stability and agility on the field. Considered to be one of the best lacrosse heads in the market, Maverik Lacrosse Tank Universal Unstrung Head will allow players to scoop ground balls with ease and elan.

You should use a high pocket with Maverik Lacrosse Tank Universal Unstrung Head. The high pocket will help you have better control over the ball. But if you want to customize it further, you can do that as well. Make proper use of the multiple stringing holes and you will be able to design a fully customized head for your next lacrosse game.

3. STX Lacrosse Stallion 700 Unstrung Head

STX Lacrosse Stallion 700 Unstrung Head oozes out premium feel. It has got sleek new metallic accents and a leather ball stop.

STX Lacrosse Stallion 700 Unstrung Head has successfully eliminated scoop drag on turf and thus allowing players to fiercely pick up groundballs. The stress gets distributed on the sidewall and thereby, it helps to add more stability between the lines.

The incorporation of C-Channel technology has made this possible. Compared to its earlier models, STX Lacrosse Stallion 700 Unstrung Head is significantly lighter and as much as 25% stronger. Shooting and checking would be fun with STX Lacrosse Stallion 700 Unstrung Head. Its two-sidewall brace design allows the players to enjoy more stability while scooping up groundballs and shooting.

The best thing about this STX Lacrosse Stallion 700 Unstrung Head is that it meets all the rules and regulations set by both NCAA and NFHS. Style and performance, STX Lacrosse Stallion 700 Unstrung Head scores high on both the fronts. Unmatchable levels of craftsmanship and engineering have gone into the making of this incredible lacrosse head.

4. East Coast Dyes – Rebel Offense Strung Lacrosse Head

With a slightly pinched scoop, East Coast Dyes – Rebel Offense Strung Lacrosse Head is going to help you pick up ground balls blazing fast. With this amazing lacrosse head, you will be able to hone your skills farther and improve the accuracy of your throws. It will help you score goals and throw checks.

Picking up groundballs will never be this easy thanks to East Coast Dyes – Rebel Offense Strung Lacrosse Head. Low angle, high angle, etc; it does not even matter. East Coast Dyes – Rebel Offense Strung Lacrosse Head can help you pick up groundball regardless of the condition of the ground or the angle.

Since all the parts of this lacrosse head are made in the USA, you don’t have to worry about the quality. It has got a mid pocket that ensures smooth release of the ball and the right amount of control. To control the depth of its pocket, adjustable bottom string is included in it.

5. Warrior Rabil Unstrung Lacrosse Head

To break in the pocket of this Warrior Rabil Unstrung Lacrosse Head, minimum level of conditioning is needed. Ideal for players who like to play aggressively in the field. With this Warrior Rabil Unstrung Lacrosse Head, you will be able to dominate in the game. You will be able to make accurate feeds, rule the faceoff circle or make vicious takeaway check.

If you want to add more ferociousness to your release shot, you need to get Warrior Rabil Unstrung Lacrosse Head as soon as possible. Long sidewall transition and maximum Truoffset design allow players to add more thrust to their shots.

6. Warrior Evo Warp Pro Lacrosse Head

Warrior Evo Warp Pro Lacrosse Head is ideal for those players who want to improve their passing and shooting skills. Best suited for either midfielders or attackman, Warrior Evo Warp Pro Lacrosse Head offers fast release with added whip. It is a game-ready head that requires no additional setup. Just unwrap this thing and start playing.

Warrior Evo Warp Pro Lacrosse Head promises to offer consistent performance throughout the game. The silky-smooth release is certainly one of its flagship features. Its pocket is made from premium quality material that can offer 100% performance regardless weather conditions.

Mid/Low Pocket: The Warp Pro Mid/Low Pocket is built for ball control and quick release. Ideal for an attackman or midfielder playmaker that needs to get their passes and shots off quickly. Whip Level 3 still has a quick release but offers added whip

7. Brine Clutch Elite Unstrung Lacrosse Head

Brine Clutch Elite Unstrung Lacrosse Head offers everything that you always wish to get from a decent lacrosse head. Be it durability, control, accuracy or power, Brine Clutch Elite Unstrung Lacrosse Head has it all. On top of that, it has got a robust built that makes it ideal for this physically intensive game. This is a premium lacrosse head that makes zero sacrifices when it comes to accuracy. The weight of the sidewall is strategically designed and placed so that the stiffness of the head does not get impacted by it one way or the other.

Definitely lighter than Clutch II, Brine Clutch Elite Unstrung Lacrosse Head has got a deep pocket that makes release a piece of cake.

Best Lacrosse Head

Buying Guide

The polymer head at the top of your stick affects every pass and shot that you play. Therefore, it is important to consider choosing lacrosse head for your stick wisely. Do not be afraid to make some additional investments in the purchase of the best lacrosse heads. Most certainly, it is going to cater to your best interests.

Lacrosse as a sport is still developing and gaining popularity with each passing day. The game of lacrosse was founded a century ago and yet, we still see the sport changing in terms of rules and equipment. Most of the equipment and gears in lacrosse are changing in order to provide the laxer better gaming experience. Lacrosse heads are also subjected to something similar.

Lacrosse heads manufacturers are making the heads lighter in weight and more durable. Lacrosse heads today are also technologically advanced to add an extra edge to the game. It is important that you are aware of the latest advancements to find the best lacrosse heads.

Certainly, you must have great skills, to begin with, and let the best lacrosse heads make up for the rest. Highest quality lacrosse heads are known to elevate your game by making the basics such as scooping, catching and throwing smooth like butter.

The best part about lacrosse heads is that they are customizable. You can choose to personalize your equipment to suit your style and game-play. You might want to dye the head, string it or tweak it; it’s all up to you.

Beginners can make do with lacrosse stick that comes with the head which is enough for them to sharpen their shooting and catching skills. Intermediate or advanced laxers can get the best lacrosse heads in the market and customize it for better lacrosse experience on the field.

Just like lacrosse sticks, the lacrosse heads are different for players at different positions in the field. Head shapes are different for offensive, defensive and all-round players. Goaltenders in lacrosse also use a whole other type of lacrosse head. More on that later.

There are plenty of lacrosse heads available under various brand umbrellas. But before you make a final purchase, you must make sure that your lacrosse head is good enough to throw down some cash. Some of the brands popular with pro-laxers are STX, Brine, Warrior, and Gait. Speaking of brands, we see laxers getting inclined towards brands like Tribe 7, Hawk, Epoch and even Adidas for some of the best options in lacrosse heads.

It is up to you to decide what kind of lacrosse head you want. Do you want it strung or unstrung? Would you like to invest in a dyed lacrosse mesh or a cool customized lacrosse head? Irrespective of whether you are in attack, defense, box, FoGo, middie, goalie or LSM, we have some of the best solutions for you if you are looking for the best lacrosse head.

Read on to know what fits your preferences the best and you are a step closer to bringing home a brand new lacrosse head!

1. Strung or Unstrung?

If you are a beginner, you are probably not familiar with the advantages of unstrung lacrosse heads yet. But for advanced players, unstrung lacrosse heads are everything. And why not, besides the usual advantage of customization, unstrung heads are cheaper than the strung ones. It’s lighter on the pocket, plus you can string it they way you want to.

Factory strung strings are useful for beginners. Laxers in high schools and even college levels may serve the average functions like passing and catching pretty well. Strung heads have the same size pockets. It is passable for those who are still shaping their basics.

But if you are an attacker, you might want to have more control over the ball when you pass or catch. This is where lacrosse unstrung heads come in. If you know how to string your own lacrosse head to the shaft, you are better off. In case you don’t, you can find someone who can string the head for you before the onset of the lacrosse season. You can also watch some YouTube tutorials to get the idea.

But if you think unstrung heads are too much hassle for you, then it probably is. You can simply go for strung lacrosse heads. After all, it depends on your personal preference of lacrosse heads.

2. Head Shape in Relation to Position

Lacrosse heads manufacturers have been designing heads specifically for players holding different positions in the field. Choosing your lacrosse head on the basis of your position in the field shall help you narrow down your options and find just the one which is meant to cater to your needs.

Let us take a look at some of the lacrosse head shape in relation to the position of the player.

Offensive: Optimal control is the primary concern for offensive players on the field. If you have skills to ace the game, you only need quality lacrosse head to back it up. In order to pass and shoot with the best possible power and accuracy, you need a head with tighter throat. You might also want to make use of nice pocket placements to make smooth passes in the field. Offensive layers also need to choose mid to low pockets for better ball retention.
Defensive: Defensive players in lacrosse are majorly concerned about stopping the offensive players. Therefore, defensive players must have heads that are durable enough to withstand frequent ground balls and checks. Defensive players need a head that features a wide scoop. The head must also com with a high pocket to be able to release the ball quickly.
All-Around: Players in the all-around position must have a stick hardy enough to sustain the whips and high checks during the game. All-around lacrosse players also have to play both sides of the ball- offense and defense. Lacrosse heads for you should enable protection of the ball while carrying it to an offensive player. All-around players must also intercept passes on defense and handle checks simultaneously.
Goalie Heads: Goalies need the most unusual kind of lacrosse heads to stop the ball. Large heads are pretty effective in doing the same. Goalies must also think about having accuracy when making outlet passes. The very first aspect that must be kept in mind is the durability of the lacrosse head. The head should also be light enough to let the goalie make outlet passes.

It is important for you to realize the significance of customization of your lacrosse heads. Pro players do not settle for the old regulars when it comes to choosing a lacrosse head for the game. If you want to add some extra boost to your performance, you must consider homing on a lacrosse head after considering the aforementioned factors. You can reach out to your coach or local sports goods store representative if you have any queries concerning the same.

If you are buying products online, please check the description of the product and make sure it meets your requirements. Also, consider the reviews and ratings of each product before you make the final purchase.

3. Pockets

Pockets in Lacrosse heads come in all kinds of styles. High-end pockets feature has 4 pieces of leather running from the scoop to the throat of the head. These pockets are laced with nylon. Synthetic fabric is also commonly used.

4. Legality

The NCAA has set some legal dimensions of the lacrosse heads that the players must abide by. NCAA approved heads are for college-level lacrosse which implies that lacrosse players in college must choose from the NCAA list of approved heads.

Lacrosse heads that are legal for all levels can be used but high school students. At the youth level, the student does not have to limit their choices following the NCAA specification. Intermediate and pro-lacrosse players at youth levels can freely choose lacrosse heads designed for the players of every level.

5. Different Types of Lacrosse Heads

Listed below are some aspects that you need to consider while on your hunt for the best lacrosse heads for your game.

Head Offset

Head offset is the design featured by every lacrosse head, after the throat to lower the ball in the stick. Defensive players must focus more on lacrosse heads that feature decent head offsets to pick up the ball after it has been knocked off.

Head Stiffness

You can buy a flexible or stiff lacrosse head. For laxers who have to do more with maximum control and hand speed must go for flexible heads while defenders can go with stiff heads to help them with ground balls.

The Scoop

The scoop in the lacrosse head must be chosen with consideration. Offensive players must go for curved or pointed scoops as it will help them pick and drop the ball with accuracy every single time. Beginners or even defensive players can go for heads with wider scoops that help pick the ball up without wasting much time.

How Do I Know Which Head to Get?

If you move higher in the stages of the game of lacrosse, it is not appropriate to use string heads any longer. It is because as an intermediate/ advanced level player, you need specialized equipment to vamp up your performance and play with accuracy.

As per your level of game-play, here are some lacrosse heads that are most appropriate for your use:

1. Beginners Lacrosse Head

Beginners are obviously still picking up the basic skills in lacrosse and therefore, must make use of a complete stick. Beginners do not need to buy the heads separately. But they must make sure that the sticks they purchase come with wider heads for the ease of ground picking the ball. Wide lacrosse head makes catching the ball easy. Beginners must look out for softer mesh to minimize the ball bouncing off.

2. Intermediate Lacrosse Head

This is the best phase to experiment with lacrosse equipment. Once you get the hang of the game and are able to get the basics right, you can choose to go for heads that are designed to make shooting and passing better and more accurate for you. Make sure you take note of the quality and durability of the plastic before you have your pick.

3. Advanced Lacrosse Head

Advance players can look out for heads featuring advanced technologies. Search for heads with more holes for stringing, more rounded scoop and aggressive pinch. You also have a say in the kind of pocket that your lacrosse head would have.

4. Elite Players for Lacrosse Head

Pro players use NCAA certified sticks made from the highest grade of plastic materials. You must make sure that the lacrosse head that you choose is light in weight and must feature stinging holes just like heads used by advance level players.

Last modified: January 9, 2021

Lacrosse Sticks – Tagged “debeer-lacrosse” – National Sports

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Step Up Your Lacrosse Game With the Power Shaft

New on our radar is the Power Shaft, a weighted lacrosse training bar. But unlike a standard bar, it has the same feel as a lacrosse stick, with bevelled edges. It’s also specifically made to work with most lacrosse brand heads, including Brine, Nike, Maverick, Reebok, STX, Warrior, deBeer and Gait.

By practicing with the added weight of the Power Shaft, players can exercise muscles used in gameplay, as well as amp up the speed and power of their field movements. During practice, players canÂ use the Power Shaft to work on increasing shot speed on offense, quickening reflexes [a must for goalies] and honing defensive skills.

By practicing with the added weight of the Power Shaft, players can exercise muscles used in gameplay, as well as amp up the speed and power of their field movements. During practice, players can use the Power Shaft to work on increasing shot speed on offense, quickening reflexes [a must for goalies] and honing defensive skills.

The Power Shaft comes in several different weights and three different sizes, for both men and women.

Long Island Lizard and leading MLL face-off man Peter Vlahakis was among the first to endorse the product. Below, Vlahakis discusses the Power Shaft at the 2011 National Lacrosse Convention:

For more info, check out ThePowerShaft.com.

Source: LacrossePlayground.com
Photo: blog.syracuse.com

Photo Credit: Getty Images // Thinkstock

Lacrosse – Page 32 of 44

Men’s Lacrosse

Ianzito leads, thrives in Syracuse’s trademark up-and-down style of play

By David Wilson | February 6, 2013

Steve Ianzito could do whatever he wanted on the field in high school. He made contributions on both ends of the field. He got out… Read more »

Staff

Syracuse men’s lacrosse beats Ohio State, Robert Morris in final scrimmages; SU ice hockey sweeps Robert Morris

By The Daily Orange Sports Staff | February 4, 2013

Syracuse finished its exhibition season undefeated after a pair of scrimmage victories in Columbus, Ohio. The No. 13 Orange defeated No. 19 Ohio State 8-7… Read more »

Women’s Lacrosse

Syracuse ranked No. 1 in national poll

By Phil D’Abbraccio | January 31, 2013

The Syracuse women’s lacrosse team enters this season ranked No. 1 in the deBeer preseason media poll, according to an SU Athletics press release Wednesday.… Read more »

Women’s Lacrosse

Syracuse assistant coach named to US national team

By Phil D’Abbraccio | January 30, 2013

Syracuse women’s lacrosse assistant coach Katie Rowan has been named to the U. S. national team to compete in the 2013 Federation of International Lacrosse World… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Galasso to miss 2013 season with injury, surgery

By Jacob Klinger | January 29, 2013

Junior attack Nicky Galasso will miss the 2013 season with a lower-body injury and surgery, SU Athletics announced in a press release Tuesday. Galasso transferred… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Scrimmage performances give Syracuse hope at faceoff X

By David Wilson | January 26, 2013

As Syracuse slumped to its worst finish in recent memory a year ago, the Orange’s struggle to find a consistent option at the faceoff X… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Marasco plays behind net as a feeder in pair of scrimmage wins

By David Wilson | January 26, 2013

JoJo Marasco was counted on as one of Syracuse’s most reliable scorers last season. He recorded a point in all but one of the Orange’s… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Syracuse adjusts to rule changes in season-opening scrimmages

By David Wilson | January 26, 2013

For all the hype surrounding the new rule changes going into the season, in the first scrimmage of the year against Hofstra it was tough… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Mike Daniello out for 2013 season

By Jacob Klinger | January 24, 2013

Mike Daniello will miss the 2013 lacrosse season for Syracuse as he recovers from a fractured skull. SU men’s lacrosse sports information director Mike Morrison… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Orange picked to finish 2nd in Big East

By David Wilson | January 22, 2013

Syracuse received two first-place votes and was picked to finish second in the conference in the Big East Preseason Coaches’ Poll. The Orange was one… Read more »

Staff

Women’s lacrosse routs Jacksonville; Ice hockey falls at Mercyhurst; Track kicks off in Gotham Cup; Tennis loses at USF

By The Daily Orange Sports Staff | January 14, 2013

In Syracuse’s season-opener, the Orange defeated Jacksonville 21-8 Sunday in Jacksonville, Fla. behind five goals and six points from freshman Kayla Treanor. She tied the… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Megill, Marasco chosen in 2013 MLL Draft

By David Wilson | January 11, 2013

Brian Megill and JoJo Marasco were both selected in the 2013 Major League Lacrosse Collegiate Draft Friday night. Megill, an Inside Lacrosse preseason first-team All-American… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Transfers provide boost, integrate into team

By Jacob Klinger | January 8, 2013

Nicky Galasso and Brendan Conroy are officially the newest members of the Syracuse Orange, head coach John Desko announced Tuesday morning through SU Athletics. Galasso… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Daniello home; SU future remains uncertain

By David Wilson | January 8, 2013

Mike Daniello is home in Cross River, N.Y. after suffering suffering a serious head injury. Head coach John Desko has spoken with the attack and… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Syracuse’s fast-paced style benefits from NCAA rule changes

By Jacob Klinger | January 8, 2013

A familiar scene played out over the course of last season as Syracuse struggled to a 9-8 finish, losing in the first round of the… Read more »

Men’s Lacrosse

Coming off disappointing season, pressure-free Syracuse expects to climb back to winning ways

By David Wilson | January 8, 2013

Laughter echoed throughout the Carrier Dome as players posed for pictures at the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team’s media day. Eric DeJohn looked out into the… Read more »

Show more 90,000

News by tag overwatch, page 9 of 31

09.10.2018 [11:43],
Konstantin Khodakovsky

Droid Snowball became the best ally of the climatologist Mei Ling Zhou after the tragic death of five of her fellow scientists at the Antarctica ecological station. In competitive action Overwatch, he constantly follows his hostess and can cause a veritable whirlwind of ice, turning opponents into frozen statues.

Mei is a fairly popular hero, so it is not surprising that the developers decided to release an accessory for fans in the form of a flying figure of Snowball the robot. Players will be able to place LEVITATING SB-9 on the shelf. It is curious that this robot not only flies over a special magnetic icy stand, but can also express different emotions, and the stand, in addition to lighting, also includes a USB charger, which makes it functional. Pre-orders are already being accepted.

You can learn more about the cheerful Chinese woman, learn about her relationship with the charming droid Snezhka, as well as the history of the invention of the endothermic blaster in the short animated film “Wake up and Sing”, which was released a year ago for the Gamescom 2017 event.

Of course, the LEVITATING SB-9 is not the first example of Overwatch-inspired accessories and figurines. In September, for example, Blizzard unveiled the Genji collectible sword. In addition to its authentic appearance, it also included lighting, motion sound effects and a decorative stand:

01.10.2018 [21:15],
Denis Tikhonov

Blizzard has announced the dates for Overwatch’s traditional annual Horror Halloween event. From the official Twitter account of the shooter, it became known that the event starts on October 9 and will last until the 31st.

As usual, some maps will be temporarily redesigned to match the visual style of Halloween, and there will be modes that are only available during this event.Not all details have been announced yet, but, apparently, Blizzard is going to slightly remake the familiar from previous seasons “Junkenstein’s Revenge” mode. All cosmetic reward chests will be themed, and at least one of the items will be Halloween-themed. The developers promise fresh costumes, animations, graffiti, lines and victory poses. The costumes themselves have not yet been presented, but recalling previous similar events, there is no doubt that Blizzard will show them in the coming days. A little more than a week ago, it became known that the Ratsenstein Monster (Roadhog) would get a bride.

Recall that Overwatch is a multiplayer shooter in which teams of up to six people can converge in different modes in each. The mechanics of the game are built around heroes, each of whom is unique, has its own history, is endowed with a set of skills and uses special weapons. The shooter was released on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on May 24, 2016.

23.09.2018 [15:51],
Konstantin Khodakovsky

The developers of the team-based competitive action movie Overwatch have revealed a number of updates that await fans of the shooter.The main innovation is a significant rework of Torbjorn’s abilities and weapons. Purpose of rework: greater versatility of the hero while preserving his uniqueness. The updated engineer, touchingly tied to his turret, can already be evaluated on test servers.

Torbjorn was originally a narrow defense specialist whose main features were the ability to create armor and control space with a turret. But collecting scrap metal and crafting armor kits had a negative impact on the gameplay.When the team was victorious, Torbjorn could easily mine heaps of scrap metal and supply armor to his team. However, if things were not going well, collecting scrap metal was not easy. In addition, in attack, Torbjorn was usually not very useful: it is difficult for him to create armor and effectively use a turret. Therefore, the new hero lost both of these skills.

To compensate for the refusal to collect scrap metal and the distribution of armor by the character, the developers have simplified the installation of the turret: now it is thrown like a projectile and automatically, in 3 seconds, is expanded into a second tier weapon.That is, in the heat of battle, you can throw it in the right place (including somewhere upward) and forget it, taking on other tasks (a damaged turret can still be repaired with a hammer, but it’s probably easier to throw a new one).

The nail gun was redesigned: it began to shoot more accurately, faster, received a faster reloading speed, but the damage was slightly reduced. A new skill “Overload” has appeared, which is restored in 12 seconds: it does not strengthen the turret, but for 5 seconds it gives the hero 150 armor, accelerates attacks and movement speed by 30%.

Overheating super ability is now designed to gain control over the area. When used, Torbjorn fires ten lava shells from his pincer hand, creating dangerous pools of molten metal that damage enemies (especially those with armor). Projectiles bounce off walls and ceilings until they hit the floor. This ability allows you to split a group of opponents, cut off the path to retreat, or slow down the advance of an enemy team. More information about Torbjorn’s changes can be found on the game forum.

Also, the developers promise innovations in the balance of other heroes (Orisa, Soldier 76, McCree, Farrah), which will soon be tested on the PTR servers. There will also be changes that will be appreciated by players with color perception difficulties: the previous capabilities will be finalized for a wider range of people who, for example, found it difficult to distinguish allies from enemies.

The Fall Halloween Horror event is approaching, which will temporarily rework new maps and locations, and introduce fresh cosmetics and skins.For example, Junkenstein’s Monster (Roadhog) will have a bride. Unfortunately, no new game modes are foreseen, but, in particular, “Junkenstein’s Revenge” will be revised.

09/15/2018 [21:36],
Evgeny Mirkin

The Humble Bundle has announced that it is giving away DRM-free free games until the end of tomorrow.

In addition to the Humble Monthly games, the Humble Bundle offers the Humble Trove, a DRM-free project directory.You can simply download and install them on your PC. These are mainly games of independent developers. So, this weekend the portal decided to distribute some of them for free.

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare – In this standalone add-on to Alan Wake, the famous writer battles the evil Mr. Scratch. A new exciting plot, hordes of terrifying enemies, more weapons and beautiful landscapes of Arizona – all this is present in the project and, according to the developers, is a real gift for fans of Alan Wake.
Limbo is an addicting puzzle platformer that has become a modern classic. In it, you control a boy who travels through a hostile world. The protagonist is fragile, like a normal child should be, which makes the adventure more intense. On top of that comes stylish 2D graphics and well-designed puzzles – something critics and gamers alike have come to love with Danish indie studio Playdead.
Uurnog is a 2D platformer featuring characters from Corinne Cadalin and algorithmic music from D Fast that adapts to your gameplay.There are two endings in the project. In particular, Uurnog also includes a full developer mode (F12 in the main menu), which includes a level editor and music software.
Fortune-499 is a game about money and magic. You take on the role of a fortune teller working in the magical resources department of a large corporation. You participate in day-to-day office activities such as forwarding emails, meetings, fighting hordes of monsters, and dealing with a printer that has chewed on paper.

Tiny Echo – in this game studio Might and Delight invites you to an ephemeral otherworldly world. The developers offer to walk through an unprecedented early kingdom and explore a calm and mysterious world, solve puzzles and deliver messages to spirits.
Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse – Bouche is the first game in a fresh franchise from the developers of Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse and DuckTales: Remastered. Assuming the role of Kebako, the eared intergalactic bounty hunter, you will go to patrol the galaxies with your faithful companion Squiddy in search of funny space criminals.The game combines the classic shoot ’em up with elements of puzzles, arcade, platformer, rhythm, sports and RPG.
Drawkanoid is a representative of the classic arkanoid genre, in which you need to destroy objects on the field with a top view. At the same time, in the game you can improve your ship and use various amplifiers to earn more points.
THOR.N is a first-person work simulator. “Today is your birthday. You wake up in a room and your caregiver greets you with warmth and compassion.Today is the day that you will leave the place in which you have been isolated all your life. Today is the day when you can start your journey towards citizenship. Today is the day when you contribute to society ”, – the developers described their game.
Crescent Bay is a first-person psychological thriller. After visiting a friend’s house, you discover that it has become the site of a mysterious and bloody crime. Neither the body nor the victim could be found. The main character John Bishop has a supernatural gift – with the help of words, he can connect with the ghosts of the past.So you have to find out what happened to Audrey: find memories, follow the events and solve the crime.

This concludes the list of DRM-free free games. You will have to pay for the rest. To download them, and also get immediate access to Overwatch, all you have to do is pay for a Humble Monthly subscription for $ 12 per month. In addition to these games, others are also relying, but their names will be revealed by the Humble Bundle only on October 5th.

12.09.2018 [20:22],
Evgeny Mirkin

Blizzard Entertainment has announced the release of a new Busan map for Overwatch.

Starting today, all gamers, whether on PC, Xbox One or PlayStation 4, can travel to Busan, a South Korean city and home to former esports star D.Va. You can see the map in the overview trailer below. The matches at Busan will be held in facility control mode in three territories: the sanctuary, the city center and the MEKA base.

In addition, it is in Busan that the latest Overwatch short film, Lucky Star, is set, featuring D.Va. The girl still has not moved away from the last attack of the enemy – Chisinau – on the city, but a new battle and a heroic deed awaits her.

Overwatch went on sale May 24, 2016 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

31.08.2018 [14:06],
Konstantin Khodakovsky

Many have already decided that the container scandal is over, but this is not the case, judging by the latest news: Blizzard will remove paid loot boxes from its games in Belgium and the Netherlands. In an official announcement on the Blizzard forums, the company announced that this controversial element will be removed from Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm due to the Belgian Gambling Commission’s April report that the container system was classified as gambling and therefore illegal.

“Although we at Blizzard were surprised by this conclusion and do not share this opinion, we decided to comply with their interpretation of Belgian law ,” the company said in a statement. – As a result, we have no choice but to take action to prevent players Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm from Belgium to buy containers and chests for real money “.

It took four months until micropayments in these games were disabled, despite the Belgian government’s April warning of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to € 800,000 for publishers who did not remove paid containers of in-game items. Blizzard has now joined Valve, which blocked Belgian and Dutch players from purchasing paid CS: GO crates last month, as well as 2K doing the same for NBA 2K.

From FIFA – another major game named in the commission’s report – containers in Belgium have not yet been removed. EA still insists that the card packs in FIFA Ultimate Team are not gambling related and therefore will not remove them from the Belgian or Dutch versions of their games. But, apparently, this publishing house will have to obey the requirements.

22.08.2018 [17:01],
Konstantin Khodakovsky

During Gamescom 2018, held in Cologne, Blizzard decided to delight fans of the competitive team action movie Overwatch with two interesting announcements related to South Korea.The first is dedicated to the new Busan battlefield for object control mode, and the second is a new short about D.Va.

The announcements were made by Chief Game Designer Jeff Kaplan, who took to the stage during the Overwatch Fan Festival in South Korea. You can get acquainted with the Busan arena in a special video. It says that the map is divided into three zones: “Sanctuary”, “Center” and “MEKA Base”, arrived on the PTR test servers and will soon appear in the game.

In the first zone, players can appreciate the serene spirit of the sanctuary, surrounded by an old temple, get acquainted with the beautiful gardens and historical Korean architecture.The Center will fight in the heart of a bustling metropolis, next to a bustling computer club, a noisy karaoke bar and a central train station. In this case, you will have to take into account the movement of trains.

Finally, in the last zone, you will compete for the location at the “MEKA Base” – the first line of defense of South Korea, where D.Va and other leading pilots of this country prepare to repel omnic attacks. Similar to other Conquest maps, teams need to conquer all three of these zones one by one in order to gain control of the city:

From D.Va, the talented and responsible pilot of the formidable ‘Mech, can be found in the CG short animated film Lucky Star. Hannah Son, 19, better known by her pseudonym D.Va, was a popular esports star in the past and even held the world title. But then her country needed her and became a pilot of MEKA armored vehicles to protect Korea from giant robotic monsters that rose from the depths of the East China Sea.

The cartoon tells how Hannah, despite her immense popularity and ostentatious carelessness, has a hard time going through every fight.She worries that robots are evolving and adapting to threats, and each new battle is given with increasing difficulty. She is afraid to fail her country and lose everything. The video shows D.Va having to single-handedly engage in squid-like flying robots. How will it end?

21.08.2018 [12:06],
Denis Tikhonov

Blizzard Entertainment has announced another Free Weekend for the online shooter Overwatch.

Last time they were held at the end of July and were timed to coincide with the release of a new hero, Taran, Hammond’s fighting hamster. This time the promotion starts on August 23 and will last until the end of the week, until August 27. The event will take place on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Participants will be able to familiarize themselves with the full version of the game without any restrictions, that is, they will have access to all 28 characters, 18 maps and all modes, including quick play, arcade and matches with custom settings. And most importantly, Overwatch is currently hosting the Summer Games, so all related bonuses, such as new cosmetics and the Lucioball mode, will also be available for review.

All you need to do to participate is to get an account on Battle.net, after which you can download the game client module. The progress you earn during the Free Weekend will stay with you, and if you buy the game, all the experience gained, levels and items will be saved.

Blizzard also adds that PS4 and Xbox One users are already preloading the game, so when the free weekend kicks off, they won’t have to waste time downloading the distro.Recall that Overwatch is a multiplayer shooter in which teams of up to six people can converge in different modes in each. It premiered on all platforms on May 24, 2016.

08/10/2018 [11:34],
Konstantin Khodakovsky

A few days ago, Blizzard announced that its competitive action movie Overwatch will begin a new season of Summer Games for the third time.All you need to do to participate is launch the game. This is good news for those who were looking forward to the opportunity to play Lucioball again, which this time will not have two arenas (Sydney Harbor and Estadio de Rance), but three – to the already known stadium will be added. Busan “in the Korean style (a kind of bow of developers to a huge fan base in South Korea).

As usual, in Lusiobol it will be offered to fight in a 3v3 format in a kind of a football match.Those interested will be able to choose both the traditional arcade mode and the competitive Lucio Cup – with qualifying matches, skill ratings, leaderboards, victory points, graffiti, badges and other rewards.

This year’s Summer Games will give sports fans over 50 new themed items, among which, in addition to all the summer items from last year’s two collections (over 200), there will be new Legendary skins: Flying On The Waves (D.Va) , Fastball (Zenyatta), Beach Season (Ana), Lacrosse (Roadhog), Catcher (Winston) and Gridaironhardt (Reinhardt).Also, the developers have prepared three skins – “Ireland”, “Mexico” and “Sweden” – respectively for Moira, Sombra and Brigitte.

You can also pay attention to the new animations of the best moments of the match – “On goal” (Orisa), “Serve” (Moira) – and the emotion “Table tennis” (May). The main new items are presented in the following trailer. All participants will receive one Summer Games container at once and will be able to earn other containers by playing in arcade mode, gaining experience, or simply buying them with real money from Blizzard.

The Seasonal Event runs until August 30th, so players have less than a month to have fun, pay tribute to the sport, and get their hands on some collectible cosmetic jewelry.

06.08.2018 [14:29],
Denis Tikhonov

Blizzard Entertainment has announced the imminent return of Summer Games to the online shooter Overwatch.The annual summer event kicks off on August 9 and runs until the 30th.

Summer Games debuted in Overwatch for the first time in 2016 and was launched in honor of the Olympic Games then held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As with any other similar event, you will be able to unlock unique cosmetic items for your heroes: costumes, lines, graffiti, victory poses and animations that celebrate the best of the match. What kind of costumes are waiting for us, Blizzard has not yet clarified.We add that materials from previous seasons of the Summer Games will also be available for obtaining in loot boxes and purchasing for in-game gold.

In addition, once again we will be able to access the “Lusioball” mode, in which two teams of three people each play a kind of football. In this mode, the ball is many times larger than the players, and you need to hit it not with your feet, but with the sound cannon of the hero Lucio. By the way, he is the only character available for play in this mode.

Recall that Overwatch is a multiplayer shooter in which teams of up to six people can converge in different modes in each.The mechanics of the game are built around heroes, each of whom is unique, has its own history, is endowed with a set of skills and uses special weapons. The shooter was released on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on May 24, 2016.

08/03/2018 [18:14],
Evgeny Mirkin

The popularity of Overwatch is proof enough that Blizzard Entertainment’s mission to make shooters more diverse has been successful.But while the development team confidently releases different characters, there is controversy and rework behind the scenes – each character is the result of hundreds of hours of refinement. The biggest challenge Blizzard Entertainment faced was trying to create a certain type of “cute” character that would fit into the world of Overwatch – the hamster.

“We thought no one would believe that this is a real hamster. It was the line we crossed in a world of living robots and advanced technology , said Overwatch Lead Writer Michael Chu.- We always planned for a cute hero, but we knew that we would have to adapt him to our world. ”.

Most Overwatch heroes, even the ones that came out a few months after the game launched, have been in development for years. Battering ram – aka Hammond, a hamster that rolls across the battlefield in spherical fur – is one of them. The Blizzard Entertainment team has long puzzled over how to put this tiny character on a par with Roadhog and the Reaper, but finally unveiled him at the end of June. “The wrecking ball has been worked on for a long time by the design and art teams,” Chu said. – This gave us the opportunity to add a cute character even with more interesting omniks ”.

But the hamster wasn’t the first cute character in Overwatch. The team worked on a number of possibilities, including a monkey with a bazooka, a small alligator, and a few tiny dragons. Some of these characters were free to fly, but the concept didn’t work as it caused too many balance issues.

Around the same time the Overwatch team was experimenting with the cute hero, the developers were also discussing the design of the character that would eventually become Junkrat. The original idea was that he was a Demoman who could roll across the battlefield. It didn’t work – although it was incorporated into the hero’s super – but then the rolling character concept was formed, tentatively titled ball guy.

This very Ball guy was originally planned as an omnic, but it was soon decided that the design could not be justified in the world of Overwatch.It was then that the idea of a destructive ball came up, serving as a vehicle for a little furry named Hammond. “We brought him to meet with Kaplan, and he said, ″ Yes, ,” Chu said. – ″ We’ll do it ″ .

While he was confirmed as a future Overwatch character, there was still a lot of work to do. The prototype was designed using a combination of D.Va’s first person view and a ball from Lusiobol, as it already had a hitbox that could be used for testing.The hero possessed a dual flamethrower as a weapon, the ability to rotate and a shield, as well as an anti-gravity strike that kept enemy players in the air for a short period of time. “He had this ability to knock someone down if he overclocked ,” said game designer Geoff Goodman. – It was as annoying as it sounds. ”.

The team went through tons of design iterations. Hammond’s weapons, walking style and speed, voice and other elements have been reworked numerous times.Even the animation has undergone radical changes. “His original mechanical gait took up too much space. It looked like putting socks on the dog, ”Chu said. – The next iteration is much faster. It was funny to watch his cheeks tremble ”.

Interestingly, Michael Chu began writing the story of Taran after the hero had been in development for a long time. “It was clear that he was from the lunar colony Horizon, since we already had talking animals and genetic experiments,” Chu said.- It made sense for Hammond to write a Winston-like origin story. We started placing tooltips at the colony level as soon as this was installed. We even created his room with a few gorilla prints to mislead the player. ”.

It was ultimately assumed that Hammond would be a brilliant escape master due to his heightened intelligence and the amount of time spent in hamster mazes as part of a scientific experiment. This talent eventually led him to escape from the lunar colony “Horizon” and the subsequent arrival in Junkertown.

Junkertown and the Horizon lunar colony also played a large role in helping the development team find the right sound for Hammond and his hybrid transport. It was immediately decided that the hero would not speak – at least in human language – so the authors decided that the hamster would build a car that could drive and translate the words of people for him. “We had to redesign the system where the characters talk to each other before the match,” said Senior Sound Designer Geoff Garnett.- Because the characters were determined to talk to each other, the translation by the robot took extra time. ”.

The sounds that Hammond reproduces have been collected from a variety of locations to make a distinct technological noise. Thus, the sound of the ram’s weapon was recorded from the M2 and M60 machine guns, and the ball was recorded from metal rolls with the actual hamster wheel.

Blizzard Entertainment has come a long way to develop a lovable Overwatch character that fits in with the game’s world and mechanics.Perhaps someday we will also see the cat with the jetpack, which the community often asks for.

Overwatch is available on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

26.07.2018 [09:41],
Konstantin Khodakovsky

As promised, Blizzard has made available to all players the resourceful mechanic Taran, who fights, sweeping away everything in his path with the help of an armored mech of his own invention.On this occasion, the developers presented a special video in which they demonstrated the abilities and tactics of battles of this unusual character.

Clever overgrown hamster Hammond, thanks to his mechanized sphere (the former life capsule of the lunar colony “Horizon”), is a rather dangerous and very mobile character of the “tank” class. His main weapon is assault machine guns “quad-shot”, which are capable of tearing apart opponents approaching a dangerous animal even at a medium distance.

In this case, the ram’s mech can take the shape of a ball and quickly roll around the map, catching up with fleeing enemies or escaping pursuers. In addition, thanks to the ability of the “cat” of the fur can pick up on any surface and begin to swing on the cable – this not only provides additional opportunities for maneuvers and movements, but also turns the character into a dangerous projectile capable of demolishing enemies in its path.

While in the air, Battering Ram with the help of the “pile-up” skill can attack enemies with a strong blow to the ground, causing damage and knocking them up.But that’s not all: the hero has the ability “Adaptive Shield”, the strength of which depends on the number of opponents around. Finally, the “Minefield” superpower allows you to clear the area of annoying enemies: the mech throws out many mines that are triggered when the enemy approaches.

All this is shown in the new video “Meet: Battering Ram”. Hammond the hamster, like Bastion, cannot speak, but this compensates for the AI of his combat sphere, which comments on what is happening in the game.Blizzard promises that future Overwatch maps will be better adapted to the abilities of Battering Ram (there will be more platforms to climb and arches to effectively cling to). It’s worth noting that the arrival of a new Overwatch hero will be marked with a free weekend from July 26th to 30th.

25.07.2018 [10:35],
Denis Tikhonov

As we informed you, on July 24, the roster of heroes in the online shooter Overwatch was replenished with a new character – the fighting hamster Hammond.To mark the occasion, Blizzard Entertainment announced a Free Weekend.

With the release of this character, the total roster of heroes in the game has reached 28, and all of them will be available during the trial period, which runs from July 26 to 30. All you need to do is get an account on Battle.net, after which you can download the game’s client module. In addition to heroes, you will also have access to all existing maps and modes.

The progress you earn during the Free Weekend will stay with you, and if you buy the game, you will keep all the experience, levels and cosmetic items gained.The only exceptions are in-game achievements, which will be disabled in the free version.

23.07.2018 [10:02],
Konstantin Khodakovsky

Sombra is one of Overwatch’s hardest characters to master. She easily dies, and the control of her abilities forces her to constantly concentrate. In an upcoming update, Blizzard wants to make this heroine (damage class) less difficult to use and also more useful in various combat situations. Some of Blizzard’s most radical innovations have received a flurry of criticism from the community.

“I was surprised at the reaction to the changes we made to Sombra, when people felt like we were weakening the hero in general, ,” Geoff Goodman, lead designer of competitive action, told VG247. – We have given her a lot of buffs along with some of her abilities weakening. The changes allowed the character to become more flexible in the gameplay, and this flexibility makes her noticeably stronger. “.

At the moment, Sobra is very situational.To fully unfold, the player needs to be in the right place at the right time, and the rest of the team needs to be properly balanced to make the most of the elusive hacker’s abilities. The player has to constantly monitor the ability timers when planning actions and hide in secluded places to recharge the “disguise”, sometimes leaving the allies without support.

“We just think Sombra requires too much micromanagement and tracking of these timers, so players often have situations where they get a little confused and lost, – explained Mr. Goodman.- This does not always sound like a fun opportunity to be invisible, attack and hack opponents from unexpected directions. “.

How to solve the problem? Get rid of timers altogether, giving Sombra the ability to use “disguise” any amount of time. She will not be able to attack or capture points when using this ability, but will be able to remain unnoticed in the camp of enemies and wait for the moment when it will be convenient to jump out and inflict significant damage.

“When we thought about it, we wondered: ‘How long can the effect of the camouflage be extended?’, – Mr. Goodman recalled. – And we doubled its duration, tried it out, but then we thought: “Is this so different from infinite invisibility?” Despite the fact that infinite disguise sounds very impressive, players will have to leave it in order to use a super ability, attack and hack targets. Thus, we made the duration of the translocator and disguise abilities infinite, so that to throw the thoughts of these timers from the minds of players, giving them the opportunity to focus on the time of hacking, dealing damage, tactics.And this turned out to be a great innovation for the character – you can hide, get to the right place, choose the optimal position without unnecessary fuss. Previously, too many worries were spent on timers, but now the player can start hacking exactly when his team approaches the point of battle or attack Zenyatta immediately after a friendly sniper has hit him. You can get out of disguise exactly at the right moment, without waiting for the ability to recharge – it’s much more fun. “.

The changes seem to be very serious, because now the players will be constantly confronted by an invisible enemy.But the developer does not think so: “Sombra feels the same as before when playing against it – it just suddenly appears and nasty. Players do not have the feeling that she was there all the time – from their point of view, she looks the same and does not look like a more dangerous enemy. This is also a plus ”.

It will become much easier to control Sombra and it will be more useful in the team if an inexperienced player suddenly decides to choose it. But in order not to turn it into a curse for rivals, Blizzard promises to weaken some aspects of the character: “Previously, Sombra moved very quickly in disguise mode.Now she will also move 50% faster, but not 75% as before. Someone is worried about these changes, but I think when people play with the updated character, they will understand that Sombra has actually become more flexible, strong and useful. “.

22.07.2018 [20:42],
Konstantin Khodakovsky

VG247 had the opportunity to chat with Overwatch Team Action Lead Designer Geoff Goodman, and he talked about the team’s work on changing one of the game’s most famous heroes, Damage Engineer Torbjorn.

“Initially, I thought about not making too much changes” , – said Mr. Goodman, and then talked about how the upcoming innovations will significantly change the character of the character. – Torbjorn has a problem that we are trying to solve – the hero is a little more defense-oriented than he would like. We need him to be more viable on the offensive, without a full load. This does not mean that he should be equally suitable for defense and attack, but we want him to at least stop being the choice of the trolls. “.

One of the main problems with Torbjorn is that his strength is growing. At the beginning of the battle, he is rather an inferior character, but by installing and improving the turret and picking up parts from defeated enemies, he begins to play at full strength. “You cannot use some of your abilities, your turret is usually not a serious threat if the character’s super ability is not ready, – said Mr. Goodman. – Very often he seems either too dangerous or, on the contrary, not a serious opponent.This is what we are trying to solve . It’s great when characters have a superpower, a powerful burst that can be used to great advantage at the right time, but Torbjorn is too tied to it, in fact, his mechanics revolve around the superpower. ”

Currently, the team is still experimenting with many of the hero’s features, but one change can be expected for sure: a complete overhaul of Torbjorn’s turret. Now the player, calling the ability, sees in front of him a holographic version of the cannon, then installs it, and then updates it with a hammer to the second level.

“Right now, in our test build, the character just throws a turret in front of him, not too far, almost like with the ‘pulse bomb’ Tracer, ,” explained Mr. Goodman. – Thus, players can throw the turret in front of them, and it will automatically be deployed into a second tier weapon. It will take a while, but the player no longer needs a hammer to upgrade it – they can focus on other tasks. This is much better during a team’s offensive, especially since the player can run up, throw it somewhere from the side, and immediately launch the attack without being tethered to the turret.Such a tactical opportunity and additional insurance during an attack is worth a lot. Of course, we will think about how to weaken the turret if it turns out to be too powerful and the like, but we start from these thoughts. ”.

Also, the developers can completely revise the superpower “Overheating” in Torbjorn. Blizzard has tried to make this ability less powerful and move it into the category of ordinary character skills, but so far the final decision has not been made.

“As a result of experiments, we can stop at a completely new superpower, because ‘overheating’ affects the hero’s power too much, but it is still difficult to say – said Jeff Goodman.- First of all, we experimented with different variations of “overheating”: we made it a normal ability that only affects the turret or only the character. We’ve definitely changed some of the basic abilities to allow the player to recharge faster – this used to annoy many people, especially when the charges ran out during the use of the super. At the moment, I think we have decided to completely avoid ‘overheating’. ”

So far, nothing has been reported about the release of the updated Torbjorn, – the team has not even started drawing new abilities and has not fully decided on their set.One thing’s for sure: Torbjorn will be completely different once Blizzard is done with him.

Peace from Garp

1. Boston Mercy

Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for injuring a man in a movie theater. This happened shortly after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. People then were very sympathetic to the soldiers, because everyone felt like a soldier at heart, but Jenny Fields was an exception: her intolerance to the behavior of men in general and soldiers in particular remained the same.In the cinema hall, she had to change seats three times, but some soldier stubbornly moved closer and closer to her. Finally she was almost at the very wall, rather filthy, and right in front of her was some kind of stupid column, blocking the screen. Jenny decided that she would not move anymore, and the soldier moved again, perched very close.

Jenny was twenty-two at the time. She dropped out of college, barely enrolling there, but in the nursing courses she had no equal – this profession came to her liking.Jenny had an athletic figure and always a good complexion, dark shiny hair and a gait that her mother called masculine (she waving her arms when walking), and her bottom is small and firm, which made her look like a boy from the back. She herself believed that her breasts were too large: such dimensions, in her opinion, gave her an overly “accessible” look.

Meanwhile, Jenny’s distinctive feature was her inaccessibility. Actually, she left college just because she had a suspicion that suddenly her parents, sending her to Wellesley [1], really only cared about how to find her a worthy fiancé.This college was recommended by the older brothers, who assured their parents that Wellesley alumni had an excellent reputation for being potentially good wives. Upon learning of this, Jenny decided that her studies would be like preparing a heifer for an artificial insemination procedure.

She majored in English literature in college, but after making sure her classmates were solely concerned with the art of treating men in a refined manner, she changed literature to medicine without any regrets.In Jenny’s eyes, the profession of a nurse had a purely practical meaning, and her study was not associated with any secret intentions (later, in her famous autobiography, she wrote with regret that nurses love to flirt with doctors, but that was only later, when she parted with medicine ).

She liked a simple, no nonsense form: a loose blouse concealed the splendor of her chest, comfortable shoes were quite consistent with her fast gait. During the night shift, she had the opportunity to read – reading was one of her few addictions.She did not suffer from the absence of students – their manner of assuming gloomy disappointment if the girl refused them, or, conversely, pompous complacency, if, succumbing to momentary weakness, gave in, disgusted her. In the hospital, for the most part, she had to deal with soldiers and working guys who were simpler and sincere in courtship: these, at least the next day, did not turn up their noses, if on the eve of their claims were, so to speak, not completely rejected. Then, all of a sudden, everyone became soldiers with the ego of students, and Jenny Fields decisively cut off all communication with men.

“My mother,” Garp wrote, “was a lonely she-wolf.”

The footwear industry created the Fields family’s wealth, although Mrs. Fields contributed in the form of a dowry. The family was doing so well that for a long time none of the Fields were personally involved in shoe making. They lived in a large house on the shores of Dogs Head, New Hampshire. Jenny always came home on weekends, mainly to please her mother, who was convinced that her daughter was “burying herself alive in the hospital,” and to prove to her that she was moral and cultured.

Jenny met the brothers frequently at Gare du Nord and traveled home by train with their company. As was the custom with the Fields, they sat on the right when traveling from Boston, and on the left when returning back. This was the desire of Fields Sr., who, although he admitted that the view from this side was especially unattractive, nevertheless insisted that all family members be sure to contemplate the source of their independence and well-being, no matter how unattractive it may be. On the right side of the train from Boston, and, accordingly, on the left, if you go in the opposite direction, you can see the Fields shoe factory in all its glory, as well as a huge panel depicting a shoe confidently striding towards you.The panel towered over the railway depot and was reflected countless times in the windows of the factory building. The inscription under the menacingly advancing boot read:

Take care of your feet

Both in the workshop and on the road,

Fields will help you with this.

Among other things, the factory produced shoes for nurses; and every time Jenny came, Mr. Fields gave her a new pair. As a result, a real shoe warehouse was formed at her home. Mrs. Fields, who predicted the darkest future for her daughter who left Wellesley, gave her a beautifully packaged heating pad every time.Jenny knew about what kind of gift it was only from her words, since she had never looked into the package. At the same time, my mother always asked the same question: “Daughter, is that hot-water bottle that I gave you on your last visit, is it safe?” Jenny painfully remembered where she was doing – whether she forgot on the train, or threw it away, and answered something like this: “I probably lost her, I really don’t need her.” Then Mrs. Fields took out another heating pad, still in the pharmacy package, and almost forcibly handed it to her daughter with the words: “Jennifer, please watch yourself.Use, for God’s sake, a heating pad. ”

From a professional point of view, Jenny saw no use in heating pads; for her it was a cute old-fashioned object, more of a psychological nature. But some of the packages did end up in her little room near the Boston hospital. Untouched, they were kept in a cabinet filled with shoeboxes.

Jenny clearly felt like she was being cut off. It seemed strange to her that, having paid so much attention to her in childhood, the parents, at some predetermined hour, seemed to turn off their love and began to pin certain hopes on her.Her life was divided into two segments – during the first, very short, she was supposed to absorb an abundant portion of their love, and the whole second, longer and more important, – to pay bills. After leaving college and becoming an ordinary nurse, Jenny seemed to have broken the thread that connected her with those close to her; and they, in turn, began to move away from her, even against their will. By family beliefs, Jenny would be supposed to become a doctor, or at worst, marry a doctor, and until then, stay in college.Every time the whole family gathered, mother, father, brothers and she herself experienced feelings of increasing alienation.

It usually happens in families, Jenny Fields thought. She will love her own children (if, of course, they are born to her) at any age, because for twenty-year-olds, the love of parents is perhaps more important. Indeed, how much does a two-year-old baby need? In the hospital, babies were the most compliant patients. The older the children, the more they require attention and the less they are tolerated and loved.

Jenny had the feeling that she had grown up on a large ship, never having looked into the engine room, much less figured out how it worked. She liked that in the hospital it all boiled down to the simplest questions: who ate what, whether what was eaten was good, and whether it was well absorbed. As a child, she never saw dirty dishes: to tell the truth, Jenny was sure that the maids, after removing the plates, simply threw them away (even they did not let her into the kitchen for a long time). And when milk was brought in by truck in the morning, Jenny was sure that dishes with food were brought along with the milk, since the clink of bottles was very reminiscent of the sounds that were heard outside the kitchen door, where the maids performed their mysterious manipulations with the dishes.

At the age of five, Jenny Fields first visited her father’s dressing room. One morning she found her by the smell of her father’s cologne. There she saw a shower – very modern by the standards of 1925, a mirror, as well as a long row of all kinds of flasks that were so different from her mother’s bottles that Jenny decided: in front of her was the secret lair of a man who had been quietly living in the house for many years. In fact, she was right.

In the hospital, Jenny knew where everything was going, and gradually she received the most prosaic answers to the question of where what came from.In the Dogs Head of her childhood, all family members had separate bathrooms, separate rooms, separate doors with mirrors on the inside. In the hospital, there was no intimacy at all, there were no secrets: if you need a mirror, ask your sister.

The most mysterious things that little Jenny was allowed to explore on her own were the cellar and the huge earthen pot, which was filled with edible shellfish every Monday. In the evenings, their mother sprinkled them with cornmeal, and in the morning they were rinsed with fresh sea water from a pipe running through the masonry to the sea.By the end of the week, the mollusks became fat, without a single grain of sand in the folds. They no longer fit in the shells, their long, hideous necks fluttering in the salt water. On Fridays, Jenny helped the cook sort them; dead molluscs would not retract their necks if touched.

Jenny demanded a book on shellfish. She studied them up and down, learned how they feed, how they reproduce, how they grow. These were the first living beings that became absolutely clear to her – their life, reproduction and death.In Dogs Head, people were not so accessible to study. And only in the hospital Jenny began to catch up and gradually realized that people, in general, are not much more mysterious and more attractive than shellfish.

“Subtle differences,” Garp wrote about his mother, “were not her part.”

Of course, Jenny could have noticed one obvious difference between shellfish in humans, namely that most people have a sense of humor, but Jenny herself was completely devoid of it. At that time, a joke was very popular with nurses in which Jenny did not see anything funny.The joke played on the name of one of the Boston hospitals. The hospital where Jenny worked was called Boston Mercy Hospital, or Boston Mercy for short. The city also had a Massachusetts General Hospital, or “Public Mass”. And there was also a hospital called “Gnarled Peter” (nicknamed its founder).

The joke was like this. One Boston taxi driver was stopped by a man who was crawling on all fours from the sidewalk to the car. He gasped, his face red with pain.The taxi driver opened the door and dragged him inside. The passenger was huddled on the floor along the back seat, knees pressed to his chest.

– To the hospital! – he barely squeezed out.

– “Gnarled Peter”? – the taxi driver called the nearest hospital.

– If only crooked, – moaned the patient. “I think Molly bit it off!

Actually, Jenny Fields rarely liked jokes, but there’s nothing to say about this one: jokes about “Peter” were not for her. She had the pleasure of seeing what trouble people sometimes got into because of poor Peter.The children were clearly not the worst thing.

Of course, she met women who did not want to have children and were very worried about pregnancy. Such women, thought Jenny, should by no means give birth, although she felt much more sorry for the children themselves. There were, of course, those who wanted children, and looking at them, she, too, was imbued with a similar desire. Someday, thought Jenny Fields, she would give birth to a baby – one. The problem was that she really didn’t want to deal with “Peter”, and indeed with men.

The soldiers’ Piters suffered the most. Penicillin began to be treated only in 1943. And this miracle medicine found widespread use only two years later. At Boston Mercy, in 1942, sulfonamides and arsenic were used. Against gonorrhea – sulfamethasole with a huge amount of water. Against syphilis – neoarophenamine. This is how absurd, according to Jenny, sex has brought a man; in order to purify human biochemistry, arsenic was introduced into this biochemistry.

Another procedure was used to treat the Piters, which also required a lot of water.Jenny often assisted with her, as the patient was usually a lot of trouble: sometimes she had to be held. The procedure was very simple – up to one hundred cubic centimeters of fluid was passed through the penis and urethra, which was then poured back. I must say that for all its simplicity, it acted on the nerves of all its participants. The device for flushing was invented by a certain doctor Valentin and, accordingly, was named “Valentin’s irrigator”. Over time, this irrigator was replaced by a more sophisticated device, but the sisters of Boston Mercy called this procedure the “Valentine’s Cure” for a long time.A suitable punishment for sinners in love, Jenny Fields thought.

“My mother,” Garp wrote, “was by no means a romantic nature.”

As the soldier in the theater began to move towards her, Jenny Fields thought he could use the Valentine Cure. Unfortunately, she did not carry an irrigator with her. In addition, this operation requires at least the consent of the patient. But what she had with her was a scalpel; she never parted with him. Its very tip was chipped off: either it was dropped on the floor, or in the sink, in a word, it was not suitable for complex operations.The scalpel was very sharp and constantly cut through the silk pockets in the bag. Then she found a case from a thermometer and closed the blade with the upper half, like the cap of a fountain pen. It was this cap that she took off when the soldier sat down next to her and casually leaned his elbows on the armrest, which was – that’s what nonsense! – one for two chairs. His long arm, hanging from the armrest, quivered like the sides of a horse chasing flies away. Jenny held the scalpel at the bottom of the bag in one hand, and held the bag tightly to her with the other.She imagined that the nurse’s dress sparkled like a sacred shield, and that it was the whiteness that attracted this predatory pervert.

“My mother,” wrote Garp, “spent her entire life in constant readiness to repulse those who attempted to attack her purse or something, in her opinion, more valuable.”

Then, in the cinema, the soldier was clearly not interested in the bag. His hand fell on her knee.

– Get your filthy hands off, – Jenny said these words out loud, so that some of the audience turned around.

“Come on,” the soldier moaned passionately and quickly climbed under her skirt: her knees were tightly squeezed, and at the same instant his entire arm, from shoulder to wrist, was cut open like a ripe melon. The scalpel, directed by Jenny’s skillful hand, passed through the tunic and shirt and neatly cut the skin and muscles so that the bone at the elbow was exposed. “If I wanted to kill him,” she later told the police, “I would slash him on the wrist. I am a nurse and I know how people bleed. “

The soldier was shouting good obscenities. Jumping to his feet, he moved his good hand over Jenny’s ear with such force that her head began to ring. With a reciprocal wave of the scalpel, she cut off a piece of his upper lip that resembled the shape and thickness of a thumbnail. “I didn’t want to cut his throat,” she later told police. “I aimed to cut off my nose, but I missed.”

Screaming in pain, the soldier crawled on all fours to the aisle and in the same manner moved on to the saving light of the foyer.In the hall, a woman screeched with fear.

Jenny wiped the scalpel on the seat, dropped it into her bag, and carefully slipped the thermometer case onto the blade. Then I went to the foyer, from where the heartbreaking screams and the call of the administrator, addressed to the darkness of the auditorium: “For God’s sake, is there a doctor here?”

The nurse, at least, was in the hall, and she in good faith hastened to provide the victim with first aid. Seeing her, the soldier immediately fainted, and not because of blood loss.Jenny knew how facial cuts bleed; they always look very dangerous, although in reality there is nothing particularly scary. A much deeper cut on the arm, of course, required immediate treatment, but the soldier was not in danger of death from blood loss. Of course, none of those present except her understood this, since there was a lot of blood, especially on her white uniform. So it didn’t take long to guess whose hands it was. The administrator of the cinema did not allow her to approach the soldier who was lying in a swoon, and someone even took her bag away from her.Mad Nurse! Mad Ripper! Jenny Fields, however, remained completely calm. She believed that as soon as the law enforcement officers appeared, everything would fall into place. However, the police did not show proper understanding either.

– How long have you been dating this fellow? One of them asked on the way to the police station.

And a little later, another asked an equally meaningful question:

– What makes you think that he was going to attack you? According to him, he just wanted to meet.

“This is a serious weapon, honey,” the third policeman told her. “I don’t advise you to carry such things with you. It can end badly.

As a result, Jenny had to wait for the brothers to settle the case. Both were law students at Cambridge Law School, across the river. One studied and the other taught law.

“Both,” wrote Garp, “shared the opinion that legal practice is a vulgar occupation, while the study of law elevates and ennobles.”

Upon arrival, the brothers were in no hurry to comfort her.

“You will bring your mother to the grave,” said one.

– And why didn’t you stay in Wellesley ?! Exclaimed another.

“A lonely girl should be able to defend herself,” Jenny said. – What could be more natural?

Then one of the brothers asked if she could prove that she had no relationship with the victim.

“Only confess to us,” the second defender whispered in her ear, “have you been seeing him for a long time?

The situation was cleared up when the police found out that the soldier was from New York, where he had a wife and a child.In Boston, he was on leave and more than anything in the world was afraid that this story would reach his half. They agreed that it would be terrible for everyone, and as a result, Jenny was released in peace. When she began to demand that the police return the scalpel to her, her younger brother said:

– For God’s sake, Jennifer, can’t you grab another one?

– I didn’t steal it! Jenny declared.

“You ought to make friends,” the elder advised.

“Wellesley students,” the brothers repeated in chorus.

“Thank you for coming,” Jenny thanked.

– What are we talking about, we are relatives! One answered.

“Blood is not water,” another added and immediately mixed: Jenny’s uniform was covered in blood stains.

– Jennifer, – said the older brother, who in childhood was an example for her in everything. His voice sounded very serious. “I don’t advise you to mess with married men.

“I’m a decent girl,” she said.

– We won’t tell mom anything, – the younger reassured.

– Father, of course, too, – summed up the first line. In a clumsy attempt to add family warmth to their meeting, he winked at her, twisting his face, and Jenny for a moment had the impression that her first ideal in life was suffering from a nervous tic.

Next to the brothers was a poster of Uncle Sam. A tiny soldier, all in brown, stood in Uncle Sam’s big palm and prepared to jump onto the map of Europe. There is an inscription under the poster: “Support our guys!” The older brother glanced at Jenny, who was studying the poster.

“And never mess with the soldiers,” he added, not suspecting that in a few months he would become a soldier himself, one of those who would not be destined to return from the war. And he will break his mother’s heart, he, not Jenny, as everyone in their family thought.

The second brother will die much later after the war, drown on a yacht a few miles from their family nest, in Dogs Head Bay. Jenny’s mother will say about his inconsolable widow: “She is still young and attractive, and the children are quite tolerable – for now, anyway.The prescribed period of mourning will end, and she will find herself a life partner. I am absolutely sure of that. ” By the way, a year after this unfortunate event, her brother’s widow turned to Jenny for advice if she knew if the due date was over and if it was time to think about a new life partner. She was afraid of offending Jenny’s mother, she was afraid of the condemnation of those around her: what if she was supposed to mourn her husband’s death longer?

– If you no longer feel sorrow, why do you need mourning? Jenny asked her. And in her biography I noticed: “This poor thing had to be prompted what to feel when.”

“According to the mother,” Garp wrote, “she has never met a woman more stupid. Incidentally, the younger brother’s widow was a Wellesley graduate.

But then, having said goodbye to the brothers already in her room, which she rented two steps from the hospital, Jenny was in such confusion that she could not really get angry. In addition, everything hurt her – both the ear, on which the soldier drove, and the back, which prevented her from falling asleep. Most likely, she pulled some muscle when these insolent people in the cinema pounced on her in the foyer and wrung her hands behind her back.Jenny recalled that a heating pad is recommended for muscle pain; she got out of bed, walked over to the closet, and took one of her mother’s gift bags.

It was not a heating pad. The mother used a euphemism because she did not dare to talk to her daughter about such sensitive topics. The package contained a syringe. Both mother and daughter knew her purpose. Jenny often had to teach her patients how to use her. True, in the hospital they were used not to prevent pregnancy immediately after intercourse, but to maintain personal hygiene and for sexually transmitted diseases.For Jenny Fields, the syringe was a more convenient and less crude analogue of the Valentine’s Irrigator.

Jenny opened all the packages one by one. There were syringes everywhere. “For God’s sake, use it!” – the meaning of these persistent requests immediately became clear: the mother was guided by good intentions and did not doubt that her daughter was leading a promiscuous sex life “after leaving Wellesley.” After Wellesley, in her opinion, Jenny walked “without knowing the restraint.”

That evening Jenny Fields went to bed with a syringe of hot water under her back between her shoulder blades.She hoped that the clamps on the rubber tube would not leak, but just in case she squeezed the tube in her hands, thrusting the tip with small holes into the glass. Jenny lay awake all night listening to water dripping from the syringe.

“In this dirty world,” she thought, “you are either someone’s wife or someone’s whore; and if not, you will soon become this or that. If you are not a wife or a whore, everyone is vying to assure you that not everything is all right with you. ” But she was sure that everything was all right with her.

In these hours, undoubtedly, the idea of the book was born, which after many years brought Jenny Fields fame. In a fair, but not very elegant expression, biography eliminated the gap between the literary merits of the work and its popularity, although, according to Garp, his mother’s work had no more literary merits than the Sears catalog [2].

What pushed Jenny Fields to a step that does not fit into any framework, a step that will be discussed a little below? Not her highly educated brothers, not the guy who flooded her uniform with his blood in the cinema hall.Not even the maternal syringes that eventually got Jenny out of the apartment. The landlady (a scandalous lady who, for some mysterious reason, saw every woman as a potential whore) found nine syringes in Jenny’s tiny room at once. In the fevered imagination of the hostess, this could only mean a panic fear of infection – of course, quite reasonable – and, of course, testified to their use on a fantastic scale, which confirmed her worst suspicions.

What she thought of a dozen new pairs of nursing shoes remained a mystery. But to Jenny, the whole situation seemed just absurd. In addition, the mother’s prudence aroused in her the most unequivocal emotions, and she, without going into any explanations, moved out.

But all this has nothing to do with her, stunned everyone, step. Paradoxically, brothers, parents and mistress – all of them thought that she was almost obsessed with sex. Jenny decided not to prove anything to anyone: they will still think that they are justifying themselves, and rented a small apartment.This triggered another avalanche of syringes from my mother and boxes of shoes from my father. She was amazed at the very train of their thoughts: if her daughter was destined to be a whore, let her be a whore clean and well equipped.

The war to some extent distracted Jenny from the bitter thoughts of misunderstanding on the part of her family, from bitterness and excessive self-pity; however, Jenny never had a penchant for introspection. She was a good nurse, and her work continued to grow. Many of the sisters went to serve in the army, but Jenny had no desire to change uniforms and sail across the sea; she found it difficult to get along with people, and she did not want to lose her familiar environment.In addition, the observance of the chain of command annoyed her even at Boston Mercy, and she believed, not without reason, that it would be even worse in a military field hospital.

And, of course, she would not have enough children there. In general, because of this, she remained in the hospital, despite the fact that many of the sisters left. She really liked helping mothers with newborn babies, especially since suddenly too many children appeared, whose fathers were either far away, or died, or disappeared. Jenny tried her best to comfort single mothers.Deep down, she envied them. For her, the situation would be ideal: alone with a newborn, her husband is killed somewhere in France. A young woman with her own baby, their whole life is ahead, and they don’t need anyone else. Almost Immaculate Conception. In any case, you can no longer think about any “peters”.

Of course, these women were not always happy with their lot. Many mourned their dead husbands, many were abandoned by their husbands; there were also those who were not very happy with the baby. But most dreamed of a husband and father for their little one.Jenny Fields, consoling them, acted as a passionate preacher of loneliness, inspired that they were very lucky.

– You’re a good mother! She said. The women agreed.

– Isn’t your baby lovely? – Again, many did not mind.

– But what about your father? What was he like?

– Loafers, which are few, – answered almost all.

– Deceiver, rude, worthless, vile, lost type. But he is no longer there! – others sobbed.

“See how lucky you are,” Jenny summed up.

She managed to convert some to her faith, but for this she lost her place in the maternity ward. In the hospital, fatherlessness was discouraged.

“Old Jenny has a Virgin Mary complex,” the nurses said. – The usual way to get a child does not suit her. We’ll have to call for the help of the Lord God.

In her autobiography, Jenny wrote: “I wanted to work and live alone. I was deemed obsessed with sex.I also wanted a child, but I was not going to give my body and my life to someone for him. And as a result, this opinion of me was confirmed. ”

This is what prompted her to take a step that shocked everyone. Hence the famous title of Jenny Fields’ autobiography “Obsessed with Sex”.

She found that by shocking others, you gain more respect than trying to live quietly, but in your own way. And Jenny publicly declared that she needed a partner from whom she would get pregnant the first time, after which they would part forever.The situation in which one call is not enough is out of the question, she explained to the nurses. Those, of course, rang out such valuable information to all their acquaintances. Very soon Jenny had a dozen proposals and was faced with a choice: either to immediately back down on the pretext that all this is gossip, or to disregard moral principles and fulfill her plans.

One medical student offered his services to her on the condition that he was given at least six attempts over three weekends.Jenny refused him for the reason that she could not entrust such a responsible task – the conception of a child – to a person who was not confident in his abilities.

Another candidate – an anesthesiologist – even offered to pay for the education of his offspring, including college, but in response he heard that his eyes were set too close and his teeth left much to be desired: she did not want such “decorations” for her child.

A friend of one of the nurses decided to take the bull by the horns, handing it to her in the hospital cafeteria a glass filled almost to the brim with a cloudy liquid.

“Sperm,” he announced, nodding toward the glass. – All at once – I don’t waste my time on trifles. If you want it in one try, you can’t find me better.

Jenny picked up the awful glass and studied it coolly. Only God knows what it really was. The nurse’s buddy continued agitating:

– The high quality of my sperm is evident. See, she’s teeming with semen.

Jenny emptied the glass into the flower pot.

“I only need one child,” she said.- I don’t need a breeding plant.

Jenny knew that she was condemning herself to a difficult life. Little by little, she got used to such jokes and learned to fight back.

In the opinion of others, Jenny Fields has gone too far. Joke as a joke, but she was clearly overdoing it. Either it’s a game that she didn’t want to give up out of sheer stubbornness, or worse, it’s really her intention. Colleagues at work could neither laugh with her at her venture, nor drag her into bed. Garp wrote: “The mother’s trouble was that she thought herself superior to her colleagues, and they felt it.As you might expect, they didn’t like it. ”

In the end, everyone decided: it was time to put Jenny Fields in her place. For this, administrative measures were applied, of course “for her own benefit,” and Jenny was separated from her newborn babies. By all accounts, she was obsessed with children. From now on, no obstetrics. You shouldn’t let her get close to the maternity ward – her heart is too soft, and possibly her brains.

And Jenny had to part with her charges. The authorities explained their decision by the fact that her high qualifications are needed in the department for the most difficult.He was well aware that the nurses working there quickly recover from all sorts of stupidity. Of course, Jenny perfectly understood the background of the translation, she was only annoyed that those around her had such a low opinion of her. Although her desire seems strange, this does not mean that she cannot be trusted at all. Truly, thought Jenny, people are completely devoid of any logic. But nothing, she is not overdone, she will still have time to get pregnant. So, in general, nothing terrible happened.

There was a war. In the department for seriously ill patients, she was especially felt.The hospitals on duty referred the most difficult patients to them, and among them – the most hopeless. There were old people on their way, victims of car accidents and accidents at work; the injuries of the children were especially dire. But most of all they brought in seriously wounded soldiers.

Jenny came up with her own classification of the wounded, dividing them into groups:

1. Burn victims (mainly sailors): the worst were sent from the sea hospital in Chelsea. But there were also burned pilots and tankers.Jenny called them outside.

2. She called a soldier with cavitary wounds “cavity”.

3. Those wounded in the head and with a spinal injury caused a mystical feeling in Jenny. Some were paralyzed, others were just quiet idiots. They had already renounced everything earthly, and Jenny called them “detached”.

4. Some of the excluded had burns and other severe injuries. The whole hospital called them the same: “hopeless”. They made up Jenny’s fourth group.

“My father,” Garp wrote, “was” hopeless. ” According to the mother, this was a huge advantage. All threads are broken. ”

Garp’s father was a tower gunner caught in the skies over France.

“The tower gunner,” Garp wrote, “was one of the most vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire of the bomber crew.”

The pilots called this fire “flack”; To the arrow, such a “flack” often seemed like an upward jet of ink that spread across the sky like ink on a blotter.The little man (only small ones fit in the circular tower), bent over in three deaths, sat with his machine guns in this nest, as in a cocoon, resembling an insect under a glass cover. The circular tower was a metal hemisphere with a glass porthole that protruded from the fuselage of the B-17 like a swollen navel. Under the tiny dome were two 50-caliber machine guns and a small man, whose unhappy duties included catching an enemy fighter in a machine-gun sight.The tower revolved, and the shooter revolved with it. At his disposal were wooden handles with a button at the end for firing; the tower shooter, clinging to these levers, resembled some formidable embryo in an easily permeable shell, which protruded from the mother’s womb to protect her. The handles also served to rotate the tower – it turned to a certain dead center, beyond which there was a danger of hitting its own propeller.

“Feeling the sky under my feet, a shooter in a capsule taken out,” wrote Garp, “felt especially uncomfortable.Before landing, if the mechanism was triggered, the circular tower was pulled inward. If it didn’t work, the circular tower would strike a sheaf of sparks from the runway no worse than a car braking at full speed. ”

Technician Sergeant Garp, a tower gunner who looked into the eyes of death, served in the Eighth Air Regiment, the formation that bombed the continent, based in England. Prior to his appointment as a tower gunner, Sergeant Garp managed to fight both as a bow gunner on the B-17C and as a fuselage gunner on the B-17E.

Garp did not like the fuselage shooting on the B-17E. Two shooters were squeezed into the airplane’s body, their embrasures were opposite each other, and as a result, Garp got in the ear every time his partner turned his machine gun at the same time as Garp. It is for this reason that in the later models of the B-17E the embrasures were bent at an angle. But Sergeant Garp did not find these transformations.

His baptism of fire was the B-17E daytime raid on the French city of Rouen on August 17, 1942.The operation went without loss. Technician-Sergeant Garp, acting as a fuselage gunner, once received from his comrade on the left ear and twice on the right. The matter was aggravated by the fact that the second gunner was much taller than Garp, due to which his elbows were just at the level of the sergeant’s ears.

The seat in the circular tower that first day above Rouen was occupied by a guy named Fowler, who was even smaller than Garp. Before the war, Fowler was a jockey. He shot better than Garp, but Garp nevertheless aimed at his place.He was an orphan and, apparently, loved solitude. And the partner’s elbows were an unpleasant neighborhood. Of course, like many, he dreamed of a fiftieth combat sortie, after which there was a transfer to the Second Air Regiment – a training unit for training bomber crews, from where he could safely retire as a shooting instructor. Before the death of Fowler, Garp envied him: the former jockey had an individual nook, where there was no one but you. “The stench in this nook is terrible, especially if you fart a lot,” Fowler said.He was a consummate cynic with a bad reputation with the field hospital nurses.

Fowler died during an emergency landing on a dirt road. The released landing gear hit a pothole, they were cut off like a sickle: having lost the landing gear, the bomber rode on its belly, crushing the circular tower with the same ease as a falling tree grape. Fowler, who, he said, trusted machines more than horses and people, was at that moment in the tower, and the plane landed directly on him.The fuselage gunners, including Sergeant Garp, saw bloody debris flying from under the sliding bomber. The closest to the landing site was the head of the squadron’s personnel department, he had the pleasure of watching all this, as in slow motion, and he vomited right in the jeep. The squadron commander did not have to wait for the official conclusion on the death of Fowler to replace him with the smallest shooter after him: the short man Garp had long dreamed of a circular tower. And in September 1942, his dream came true.

“My mother was always interested in details about the patients who came to her,” Garp wrote.

When a wounded man was brought to the hospital, Jenny Fields was the first to find out from the doctor how and where he was wounded, and put him in the appropriate column. To better remember the surname and the diagnosis, she came up with rhymed clues: Private John – a ringing in his head, Midshipman Chick – a puff of a leg, Corporal Glenn – a torn member, Captain Maxlen – no skin at all. But Sergeant Garp puzzled her. During his thirty-fifth sortie over France, the little turret gunner suddenly stopped firing.The pilot drew attention to the lack of machine gun fire from the circular turret and decided that Garp was wounded. He himself did not feel the blow in the underbelly of the plane and hoped that Garp was not badly injured. As soon as the plane landed, Garp was hastily transferred to the sidecar of a special motorcycle, as there was no ambulance nearby. And the little technician sergeant, to everyone’s amazement, took up his cock. The stroller was equipped with a tarpaulin cover in case of bad weather, and the pilot hurried to cover Garp with it. In the cap there was a window through which the pilots, mechanics and the doctor saw the wounded sergeant.His cock seemed too big for such a small man, and he treated him clumsily, like a child – at least worse than a monkey in a zoo. At the same time, Garp, well, just like the aforementioned monkey, now and then looked from his cage at the faces of the people watching him.

“Garp,” the pilot called out uncertainly. Garp’s forehead was covered in caked blood, but at first glance there was no damage.

– Garp! The pilot shouted. In the metal sphere, where the machine gun used to be, there was now a gaping hole; the anti-aircraft shell, as you can see, hit the machine gun body; At the same time, Garp’s hands did not hurt, but they were doing their job now poorly.

– Garp! The pilot shouted again.

“Garp,” the technician-sergeant repeated. He mimicked the pilot like a parrot or a talking starling. “Garp,” he said again, as if he had just learned the word. The pilot nodded his approval and Garp smiled. – Garp! He exclaimed again, as if greeting those around him. Instead of “Hello!” – “Garp!”

“My God, Garp,” the pilot said. Holes and cracks were clearly visible in the window of the circular tower. The doctor opened the window on the canvas hood and looked inside.Something was wrong with Garp’s eyes: they rotated in different directions, each on its own. Probably, it seemed to Garp that the world was floating on him, then receding; if, of course, he saw anything at all, the doctor thought. Neither the doctor nor the pilot knew that several sharp, thin fragments of the anti-aircraft shell had damaged one of the nerves in Garp’s brain; this nerve transmits a motor impulse to the muscles of the eyeball. But the rest of his brain also received many cuts, as is the case with very careless brain surgery.

The “operation” on Sergeant Garp’s brain was done very badly, and the horrified doctor did not even try to pull off the blood-soaked helmet that had stuck to his head and slid down on his forehead to the point where an elastic shiny bump grew right before our eyes. They rushed to look for the motorcyclist who was carrying the doctor, but he was turned inside out somewhere, and the doctor decided that he would put someone else in the carriage with Garp, and the motorcycle would drive himself.

– Garp? – Garp turned to him, repeating the only newly acquired word.

– Garp, – the doctor confirmed. With a contented air, Garp continued to serve his impressive cock with both hands, until he finally successfully completed such an important task.

– Garp! He shouted. His voice was filled with joy and surprise at the same time. He rolled his eyes, as if trying to persuade the world that was eluding him in the end to stop. He did not seem to quite understand whether he would succeed.

– Garp? He said uncertainly.

The pilot patted him on the arm and nodded to the nearby crew members and the ground brigade, as if saying: “Guys, let’s support the sergeant, let’s calm him down.”And all those around, respectfully observing the process of ejaculation that had just taken place, having recovered from the shock, said in unison: “Garp! Garp! Garp! ” This chorus was supposed to satisfy even the most fastidious.

Garp nodded his head happily, but the doctor took his hand and whispered passionately:

– Never move your head! O \ ‘kay, Garp? Please don’t move your head.

Garp’s eyes swept past the pilot and doctor, patiently awaiting their return.

– Quiet, Garp, – the pilot whispered, – sit quietly, oh \ ‘kay?

Garp’s face radiated a serene calm.Continuing to squeeze the falling member with both hands, the little sergeant sat with the air of a man who had done everything that was required of him at that moment.

There was nothing they could do to help Sergeant Garp in England. But he was fortunate enough to return to his native Boston long before the end of the war. The senator helped him in this. An article appeared in one of the Boston newspapers, accusing the Navy of not sending all the wounded to their homeland, but only the sons of influential families. To refute such outrageous slander, one US senator said: “If there is an opportunity to send the seriously injured home, the chances are equal for everyone, even if you are an orphan.”A commotion arose in the army, they began to look for a wounded orphan so that the senator would not be reproached for disinformation. Fortunately, the orphan was quickly found.

But Technician Sergeant Garp was not only an orphan: he was a complete idiot with a one-word vocabulary who could not even make press statements. And most importantly, in newspaper photographs, the shooter Garp always smiled.

When the freaky sergeant was taken to Boston Mercy, Jenny didn’t know which group to assign him to.He was clearly “detached”, more obedient than a child, but what else happened to him was impossible to understand.

– Hello! How are you? She asked as the grinning Garp was wheeled into the room.

– Garp! – he reported.

The oculomotor nerve was partially restored, and now his eyes jumped rather than rotated, but his hands were in gauze mittens; In the hospital compartment of the transport ship, a fire accidentally broke out, and Garp decided to play with fire in the literal sense of the word.Seeing the fire, he stretched out his hands to it, the flames licked his face and, in addition, burned his eyebrows. Jenny thought he looked a lot like a shaved owl. Because of the burns, she assigned him to a special group of “outwardly detached”. But there was something else with Garp. The scorched palms were so thickly bandaged that he could not engage in masturbation, which he indulged in often and with success, but always unconsciously, as was recorded in his medical history. And the doctors who watched him on the ship after the fire began to fear depression – after all, he was deprived of the only entertainment available to him, at least until his hands were healed.

It is possible that Garp’s internal organs were also damaged. Many small fragments were stuck in his head, some of them settled in the areas of the brain inaccessible to the scalpel, and there was no way to extract them. The insane lobotomy performed on his brain could be just the beginning of his troubles, the process of internal destruction of brain tissue, most likely, progressed.

“We are already degrading quite quickly,” wrote Garp, “and without the help of anti-aircraft fire.”

In the hospital, even before Sergeant Garp arrived, there was a wounded man with similar head injuries.For several months he felt quite tolerable, talked to himself, and occasionally wet his bed. Then hair began to fall out, speech disorders appeared, and before his death, mammary glands began to grow.

Based on all the information available, as well as the X-rays, Jenny Fields concluded that Garp was apparently hopeless.

But she found him very cute. The former tower shooter was a small, graceful man, innocent and spontaneous, like a two-year-old child.He shouted: “Garp!” When he was hungry or was happy about something; pronounced “Garp?” with an interrogative intonation, when he was puzzled by something or talking with a stranger, and calmly said “Garp”, recognizing the interlocutor. Usually he did everything that was told to him, but it was impossible to rely on him entirely: he quickly forgot everything. In addition, he acted like an obedient six-year-old child, then like a curious two-year-old toddler.

He fell into depression, judging by the medical history, every time he got up a member.At such moments, he clutched his poor grown up “Peter” with bandaged hands and cried. He cried because the gauze did not give him the pleasure imprinted in the twisted brain that the palms did, and besides, any careless movement caused severe pain in his hands. At such moments, Jenny Fields came to his aid. She scratched his back between his shoulder blades until he began to squint like a cat, and all this time she talked to him, changing intonations to keep his elusive attention.Usually the nurses talked to the patients in an even, soothing voice, but Jenny understood that Garp did not need sleep at all. He was a small child and bored; it means he must be entertained. And Jenny did her best. She turned on the radio, but some of the programs upset Garp; why – no one could say. From others, his penis instantly rose; as a result, another depression, and so on. Once Garp had a wet emission from some transmission; this surprised and delighted him so much that from then on he enjoyed just looking at the radio.But alas! Jenny couldn’t repeat that transmission, and no other had the same effect. She knew that if she could connect poor Garp to the “emission” program, it would make her job much easier and brighten his life. But, unfortunately, easy paths in life rarely fall out.

She tried for a long time to teach him new words, but nothing came of it. When she fed Garp and saw that he liked the food, she would say:

– Good! It’s good!

– Garp, – he agreed.

And when he spat food on the bib, making a terrible grimace, she said:

– Bad! This is bad, right?

– Garp! Was the standard answer.

The first sign of his worsening condition for Jenny was the disappearance of the sound “g” in a single word. One morning he met her with a joyful “Arp”.

“Garp,” she told him sternly. – Garp.

– Arp, – he repeated. And Jenny knew the end was near.

His age seemed to be decreasing every day.In a dream, he was now waving with clenched fists, his lips were pulled into a tube, his cheeks moved as if sucking, his eyelids trembled. Jenny talked with babies for a long time and therefore knew: the tower shooter sucked her mother’s breast in a dream. She even thought about taking a pacifier in the maternity ward, but she did not have the slightest desire to appear there: the jokes of the midwives now annoyed her. (“And here our Virgin Mary appeared for a nipple for her child. Jenny, who is a happy father?”) She watched Sergeant Garp suck in his sleep, and imagined the last stages of his life: quietly, serenely, he would return to the embryonic state and will stop breathing lungs; then his soul will happily split in two – one will be forgotten by the dreams of the egg, the other – by the dreams of the sperm.And, in the end, it just won’t be.

In general, this is where it all went. The infant stage was so intense that Garp woke up to feed every four hours; he even cried now, like a baby: his face turned red, tears rolled down and dried up immediately, as soon as Jenny spoke or turned on the radio. Once she scratched his back and he vomited. Jenny broke down and burst into tears. She sat at his head and prayed to God that he would grant him a quick, painless way to the mother’s womb and further into nothingness.

If only his hands would heal, she thought; then he could suck his thumb. When he woke up, he began to demand a breast, Jenny gave him her own finger, he grabbed it with his lips and began to suck. And although he had quite strong adult teeth, he never bit her: obviously, in his infant perception, his gums were toothless. This pushed Jenny to breastfeed him one night. He sucked on her empty breast with lust, and Jenny felt that if she went on like this, she would have milk.One day she felt a strong push in her womb, filling her with an unknown feeling, maternal and sexual at the same time. Her imagination played out, and for a moment she seriously believed that she could get pregnant simply because the “chest” tower shooter would suck her breast.

So everything went on, but it turned out that the shooter Garp had not yet turned into a baby. One night while he was sucking her, Jenny noticed that his cock had lifted the sheet; with clumsy bandaged hands Garp rubbed him, sobbing with chagrin and not letting go of his chest.Then Jenny decided to help him: she took the source of his torment with her cool, talcum powder hand. Garp immediately stopped sucking and just started poking her breasts.

– Ar, – he moaned. Now the “P” is gone.

First “Garp”, then “Arp” and now only “Ar”; she knew he was dying. There is only one vowel and one consonant left.

When he finished, his cum, wet and hot, filled her palm. Under the sheet it smelled like summer in a greenhouse; it was the smell of unheard-of fertility, indomitable and boundless: whatever you plant, it will blossom.It is enough to throw it into the greenhouse, and the children will grow like mushrooms.

Jenny gave herself exactly one day to think about it.

– Garp! Jenny whispered.

She unbuttoned her dress and bared her breasts, which she had considered too big all her life. “Garp?” She whispered in his ear; his eyelids flinched, his lips pulled towards her. From the rest of the room they were fenced off by a drawn curtain that enveloped Garp’s bed in a white shroud. On one side lay the “outer”; the poor fellow fell under a flamethrower.All slippery from the ointment, bandaged from head to toe, he was also without eyelids, which made it seem that he was constantly watching everyone; in fact, he was blind. Jenny took off her sturdy nursing shoes, unbuttoned her white stockings, and kicked off her dress. And pressed her finger to Garp’s lips.

On the other side of his bed lay a patient from among the “cavities”, gradually turning into a “detached”. He did not have nearly the entire lower intestine and rectum; the kidney had recently started to fail, and the pains in the liver were driving him crazy.At night, he had nightmares: he was forced to urinate and defecate, although these departures remained for him in the distant past. Now they passed unnoticed, the body was emptied through tubes connected to rubber bags. He often moaned, but unlike Garp, he uttered whole words at the same time.

– Shit! He moaned.

– Garp, – Jenny whispered. She took off the slip, panties, bra and pulled off the sheet.

– Lord, – whispered “outside”; his lips were covered in blisters from burns.

– Damn shit! – shouted “detached”.

– Garp, – said Jenny Fields and took his erect member in her hand.

– Aaaa, – said Garp. Now the “R” has already disappeared. To express the entire gamut of feelings, he had one single vowel.

– A-ah-ah, – he repeated when Jenny brought his cock into herself and with all her weight sank down on him.

– Garp, – she called. – All okay, Garp? You feel good?

“Okay,” he said clearly.The word came up from the depths of his crippled memory the instant he came inside her. Jenny’s first and last real word from Garp. As soon as his penis fell, he again held out his “ah-ah”, closed his eyelids and fell asleep. Jenny wanted to give him a breast, but he didn’t even move.

– My God, – said the “outer”, barely tossing his burnt tongue.

– Piss! – shouted “detached”.

Jenny Fields washed Garp, washed herself with soap, pouring warm water into a white enamel basin.Of course, she did not douch, she did not have the slightest doubt – a miracle had happened. She felt like a rich, fertile soil; Garp watered her generously, as if spilling life-giving moisture on a dying flower bed.

It was only once. No more. What for? She didn’t get any pleasure. From time to time she helped him with her hand; when he cried, he gave a breast. And after a month his flesh finally stopped tense.

It’s time to take off the bandages from your hands; it turned out that even the healing process is scrolling in the opposite direction; I had to bandage them again.He no longer asked her for breasts. Jenny believed that he began to have dreams that dream of fish. He had already, as it were, returned to his mother’s bosom, lying in the middle of the bed in a fetal position, pulling his knees up to his chest. And he didn’t make any more sounds. One morning his little leg jerked once or twice, as if it were kicking something. And Jenny clearly felt soft shocks inside her. The term, of course, is short, but she did not doubt: the life conceived in her would soon declare itself.

After a while Garp stopped kicking.True, he was still breathing: a clear example of the adaptability of the human body. But he ate nothing; he had to be fed intravenously, so he regained a kind of umbilical cord. Jenny anxiously awaited the end. Will there be a desperate struggle in the end, like that of a sperm seeking copulation? Or will the protective shell disappear by itself and the naked egg will quietly wait for its death? And will little Garp’s soul split at the end? But Jenny didn’t get to see the final stage.The technician sergeant died one of her days off.

“It couldn’t have been otherwise,” Garp wrote. “She wouldn’t have let him go so easily.”

“Of course, when he was gone, something stirred in me,” wrote Jenny Fields in her famous autobiography. – But after all, everything that was best in him was preserved in me. You couldn’t imagine any more beautiful thing: he prolonged his life in the only possible way for him, I got pregnant in the only possible way for myself. And let others consider my act immoral.This proves once again that very few people respect the rights of the individual in our country ”.

It was 1943. Jenny’s pregnancy soon became visible and she was fired from her job. Of course, her family was not surprised, they did not expect anything else from her. Jenny has long been desperate to find understanding from her parents. She wandered like a shadow along the long corridors of her native nest in Dogs Head, although she was quite pleased with herself. Her imperturbable calm made them uneasy, and they stopped tormenting her. And Jenny was just happy, she just forgot to come up with a name for the unborn baby, although all her thoughts were occupied exclusively with him.

This was discovered when a lovely nine-pound boy was born, and Jenny did not know what to call him. The mother asked the baby’s name, but Jenny, having just exhausted herself and taking sleeping pills, was not very talkative.

“Garp,” she said shortly.

Her father, the shoe king, thought she had hiccupped, but her mother whispered to him:

– She says his name is Garp.

– Garp? He asked. They still hoped to find out from their daughter who the child’s father is.Jenny, of course, left them in the dark about this.

– Ask her, is this the name or surname of the son of a bitch? The father said in his wife’s ear.

– Is that a first or last name, dear? – asked the mother.

Jenny was almost asleep.

“Garp is Garp,” she said. – And that’s all.

“It seems to me that this is a surname,” the mother said to her father.

– What is his name? The father asked angrily.

“I don’t know,” Jenny muttered. And it was absolutely true.

– She doesn’t even know his name! – roared the father.

“For God’s sake, daughter, he must have a name,” the mother said conciliatingly.

– Technician Sergeant Garp, replied Jenny Fields.

– Some lousy soldier, I had no doubt, – my father was indignant.

– Technician Sergeant? – asked the mother.

– T. S., replied Jenny Fields. – T. S. Garp. That is my boy’s name. – And with these words she fell asleep.

Jenny’s father was beside himself.

– T. S. Garp! – he went broke. – What a name for a child!

“That’s his name,” Jenny told him the next day.- His own wonderful name!

“It was a pleasure to go to school with that name,” Garp wrote. – The teachers asked what the initials mean. I tried to explain to them that these initials mean nothing. But they didn’t believe. Then I said: “Call your mother and ask her.” They did just that. Old Jenny would come and fix their brains. ”

This is how TS Garp made the world happy with his appearance; born a good nurse with an independent temper and a small tower shooter – his last shot.

2. In blood-blue tones

TS Garp always thought that early death would be his lot. “I think I will not be mistaken if I say that I, like my father, have a craving for brevity,” he wrote, “I hit the target with one shot.”

As a child, Garp safely escaped the impending danger of imprisonment in a girls’ boarding school, where his mother was offered a position as a senior nurse. Jenny Fields foresaw in time the terrible consequences that threatened her son, if she agreed to this job (she and her child were offered an apartment in the girls’ dormitory): from childhood, Garp would see only women around him.She imagined the first sexual shocks of her son, for example, the imaginative scenes in the laundry room, where the girls for fun dipped the boy in a silky heap of women’s underwear. As a matter of fact, if not for concern for Garp, Jenny was fine with boarding work, but she turned it down and entered the famous Stiring High School as a nurse. There she and her son were accommodated in a cold hospital wing with barred prison windows.

Jenny’s father was annoyed that she had decided to make a living herself.The family had money, and the old man wanted his daughter to hide her shame in her own nest on the shores of Dogs Head Bay. And there the fledgling child will grow up imperceptibly and leave somewhere. But he was reconciled with the Stiring School.

– If a child has brains by nature, he will eventually get to this school anyway. You can’t find a better place for a boy, – he pronounced his verdict at a general meeting of the family.

Speaking about the presence of Garp’s “brains by nature”, Jenny’s father hinted at the child’s dubious heredity.At the time, only boys were admitted to Styring School, where Jenny’s father and then her brothers studied. Jenny firmly believed that she was doing the greatest good for her son, dooming herself to a voluntary imprisonment in a men’s school. This is to make up for her father’s absence, her parent said.

“It’s a strange thing,” wrote Garp, “my mother, knowing well that she would never have agreed to join her life with a man, suddenly decided to live under the same roof with eight hundred boys.”

So, Garp’s early years were spent in the hospital wing of the school where his mother worked.It cannot be said that the schoolchildren treated him in the same way as the teaching sons, who were contemptuously called “professors’ children.” This is understandable, because the school nurse occupies a very modest place in the school staff. Jenny Fields, among other things, didn’t even bother to invent a decent legend about Garp’s origin. Let’s say, think of a husband and thus, as it were, legitimize the birth of a child. Jenny bore the name Fields and always introduced herself that way. Her son was Garp, and she did not see anything shameful in this.“This is his own name,” she said.

The whole school, of course, understood what was what. In Styring, it was not only not forbidden to turn up your nose, but even encouraged in special cases. But, of course, everything requires measure and tact. One was supposed to be proud of what was really worth being proud of, some undeniable achievement. While observing the politeness. But Jenny did not understand such subtleties.

“My mother, a simple soul,” wrote Garp, “was never deliberately proud, only under the influence of circumstances.”

Yes, pride was welcomed in Stiring. But Jenny Fields was proud of the illegitimate child! Maybe she shouldn’t have sprinkled ashes on her head because of this, but in her position it was better to keep more modest after all.

Jenny wasn’t just proud of Garp. She was proud of the way she got it. The world did not yet know its history; Jenny has not yet written her autobiography or even started it. She waited for Garp to grow up to appreciate her life.

The son knew only what Jenny could tell the first person he met, who dared to ask her about it.The answer would be three simple phrases:

1. Garp’s father was a soldier.

2. He died in the war.

3. Who thinks about marriage formalities when there is a war?

The mysterious understatement of the plot could be interpreted in the most romantic spirit. Garp’s father could well be a hero. And Jenny Fields be a nurse in a field hospital. They fell in love with each other, but their love was doomed. Garp’s father, foreseeing his fate, decided to fulfill his last duty to humanity – to leave behind posterity.However, such a melodrama did not fit in with Jenny’s whole appearance and behavior. She was clearly pleased with her loneliness and did not surround the past with mystery. She was never seen in a bad mood, she devoted herself entirely to work and caring for little Garp.

The Fields were, of course, well known in Styring. The famous shoe king was always generous to his alma mater; he even served on the school’s board of trustees, although few people knew about it. The Fields were not among the oldest families in New England, but of course their capital did not appear yesterday.Jenny’s mother came from the influential Boston Wicks family, who were more respected at the school than the Fields: teachers who had worked at Stiring for many years remembered the time when the name Weeks flashed annually on the alumni list. But Jenny Fields, by all accounts, did not inherit the respectability of both families. She was beautiful, everyone agreed with this, and nothing more; her uniform was the white nurse’s uniform, and she could afford something a little more smart. A nurse, who also loves her job, was very strange, given the social status of the family.Taking care of the sick is perhaps not a very suitable occupation for the Weeks or Fields.

In dealing with people, Jenny showed that straightforward seriousness, from which people became more frivolous simply uncomfortable. She read a lot, no one knew better than her what treasures were hidden on the shelves of the school library. If the book you were looking for was not there, rest assured that the book was on Sister Fields’ card. Jenny answered the phone politely and often offered to hand over the book to the reader herself as soon as she finished it.She read books very quickly, but never discussed them with anyone. A person who borrowed a book from the library just to read it, without intending to discuss it later, looked like a black sheep in school. Indeed, why then take books at all?

But Jenny was even more weird — she attended lectures in her free time. According to the school charter, employees, as well as their wives, had the right to listen to lectures for free, having received permission from the teacher. But tell me, could anyone refuse a nurse who is interested in Elizabethan [4], the Victorian novel, the history of Russia until 1917, an introduction to genetics, the history of Western civilization? As the years passed, Jenny Fields moved from Caesar to Einstein, bypassing Luther, Lenin and Erasmus, mitosis [5] and osmosis [6], Freud and Rembrandt, chromosomes and Van Gogh; from Styx [7] to Thames, from Homer to Virginia Woolf, from Athens to Auschwitz.Jenny was the only woman in class. She invariably came to class in a white uniform, sat down at the table and listened so attentively and quietly that her presence was forgotten; the educational process went on as usual, and the frozen figure in a white coat eagerly listened to every word of the teacher; it was a silent witness of what was happening, most likely benevolent, but perhaps creating his own judgment.

Her time has come – Jenny received exactly the education she dreamed of. But her craving for knowledge was fueled not only by selfish interest.She tried to understand what and how they teach in Stiring, so as to help Garp with practical advice as needed. Gradually, she learned everything about school: which lessons are a waste of time, and which are worth their weight in gold.

She had many books, which soon became cramped in her small apartment. After working at the school for ten years, she accidentally discovered that students and employees were entitled to a 10 percent discount at the school’s bookstore. She was very angry because the salespeople kept it from her. She did not spare her own books, so they stood on the shelves and in the gloomy wards of the isolation ward.When there was no room there, the books migrated to doctors’ offices, to the waiting room, and even to the X-ray room. First, they pressed newspapers and magazines gathering dust on the tables, and then completely replaced the press. Those who happened to fall ill at school were imbued with special respect for Jenny. Still, here in the hospital, not some empty reading and various medical rubbish. In the queue for a doctor, for example, you are offered to look through “Autumn of the Middle Ages” [8], and while you are waiting for the test results, your sister brings an interesting guide to fruit flies.Well, if you find something serious and you need to go to the clinic for a long time, then consider that you have a lucky chance to master Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. Especially for boys with broken limbs and in general for those who got injured in training or sports, there were adventures and stories about heroes: for example, instead of “Sports Illustrated” – Conrad and Melville, and instead of “Time” and “Newsweek” – Dickens , Hemingway and Mark Twain. Oh, this longed-for dream of reading lovers is to get sick and end up in a school isolation ward.Here it is, a place where you can finally read to your heart’s content.

After Jenny Fields worked at Styring for twelve years, school librarians developed the habit of sending readers to the hospital building if the required book was not available. And in the bookstore, the buyer could be told: “Go to the detention center of Sister Fields, she probably has this book.”

Upon hearing the request, Jenny, straining her memory, frowned and said something like: “I think this book is in the twenty-sixth ward at McCarthy’s.He is lying with the flu. As he reads, he will immediately give it to you. ” Or: “I just saw her in the water treatment room. I’m afraid the first pages are a little damp. ”

It is impossible to assess Jenny’s influence on the learning process at Stiring. But she never forgot the insult she had been inflicted on her in the bookstore – for ten whole years buying books without a discount!

Garp wrote: “My mother thoroughly supported the school bookstore trade. The fact is that nobody read anything in Stiring. ”

When Garz was two years old, the school management renewed Jenny Fields’ contract for another three years.She knew her business perfectly, no one argued with this. Garp was like all children, except that he sunbathed in the summer stronger than others. In winter, his face took on a yellowish tint, and he was all plump, rounded, like an Eskimo hidden in a hundred clothes. Young teachers who had been in the war said that the baby’s figure resembles the smooth outlines of a bomb. However, what to say, children are children, even illegitimate ones. And Jenny’s own weirdness caused a slight hurtful irritation.

So she signed a three-year contract.She went to lessons, improved and, most importantly, paved the way for her son. Her father said that the education in Stiring was given first-class, but Jenny wanted to see for herself.

When Garp was five years old, Jenny Fields was appointed older sister. Young, energetic nurses were not eager to work at school. Not everyone will agree to endure the violent pranks of young gentlemen. Few people were attracted by life with them under one roof. Jenny seemed to be fine with everything.And in the end, she replaced many of her mother. She would meekly rise in the middle of the night, when some boy, waking up and jumping up, broke his water glass or called his sister with a bell. It happened to her to put things in order when the dispersed tomboys raged in a dark corridor, and then suddenly, riding wheelchairs and hospital beds, they staged gladiator fights. Jenny’s watchful eye could not escape secret negotiations with the girls – the teachers’ daughters – through the cast-iron bars of the windows; she also prevented the sick from sneaking out of the ward through the window along the old brick wall entwined with ivy.

The isolation ward itself was connected to the outpatient wing by a not very wide underground passage through which it was possible to carry a wheelchair, and there was still room on the sides for two slender sisters. The “bad” boys loved to play the ball in the tunnel. The pounding of feet and the kicks of the ball echoed to Jenny’s apartment, located in the farthest part of the wing. It seemed to her then that the laboratory rabbits living in the basement room grew up to gigantic proportions at night and rolled trash cans, trying to drive them with their muzzle as deep as possible underground.

When Garp was five years old, the school audience began to notice some oddities in him. It is difficult to say what is so unusual about a five-year-old child. True, the boy’s head resembled the dark, glossy head of a seal, and looking at his miniature build, one could not help but recall the old conversations about his heredity. By the nature of the child, apparently, went to the mother; tenacity was combined in him with a complete lack of sentimentality, while he was as if on alert all the time.For five years he was clearly too small, but in behavior and conversation he seemed older. His imperturbable calm made me feel a little uncomfortable. Stocky, strong, he stood firmly on the ground and struck a badger or raccoon with his heavy agility. Mothers of other children noted with dismay that the boy could climb anywhere. It cost Garp nothing to run up the children’s slide, pull himself up on high rings, climb the upper stands of the stadium, the most dangerous trees.

One evening after supper Jenny suddenly missed her son.Garp was allowed to enter the wards, run around the outpatient wing and talk to the boys. She usually called him home, saying only two words on the selector: “Garp, home.” He knew perfectly well what he could and what was not: for example, under no circumstances should he look into the wards where infectious patients are lying, and pester those who do not feel well. Garp was very worried about sports injuries. He loved to look at the bandages and splints, listen to the stories of the victims many times. Garp was the son of his mother, a sister of mercy by calling; he spent whole days near the sick, fulfilling various requests, passing on notes, and slowly bringing food into the ward.And then one evening – he was then five years old – he did not respond to the usual “Garp, home.” Jenny’s voice was heard in every ward, it echoed throughout the hospital wing, reaching those rooms where Garp was strictly forbidden to appear: the laboratory, the operating room, the X-ray room. Jenny knew for sure: if Garp does not respond, it means that either he is not in the building, or he is in trouble. She hastily assembled a search party from the walking patients.

It was a damp, foggy evening at the beginning of spring.Some guys were ransacking the territory, looking for Garp in the wet thickets of bushes and in the parking lot. Others walked around the house, not missing a single dark corner, not a single storage room, access to which was strictly prohibited. At first, Jenny had the most monstrous assumptions, she ran to the linen dump, which was a smooth pipe, which, “propelling” through all four floors, went into the depths of the basement. Garp was not even allowed to approach him, let alone throw underwear there.Below, under the hole in the metal pipe, Jenny found nothing but a pile of dirty linen spewed out by the pipe onto the cement floor. Then she rushed into the boiler room, looked into the huge cauldrons of boiling water, but Garp was not there either. Then she went down to the first floor of the hospital wing: what if Garp, breaking the ban, played on the stairs and fell into the flight? The most terrible suspicions were not confirmed. And a new fear began to torment her: what if Garp became a victim of a sexual pervert lying in her isolation ward? At the beginning of spring, the chambers are overcrowded, can you keep track of everyone? And she does not know them enough to suspect someone of unnatural inclinations.On this first truly spring day, there were desperate heads who dared to swim, despite the snow that had not yet melted; someone lay with a cold – in the spring resistance to disease was weakening, and someone with sports injuries.

One such patient, Hathaway, is now calling from a room on the fourth floor, calling for Jenny. While playing lacrosse [9], he severely injured his knee. Two days after he was splinted and sent on crutches, he managed to take a walk in the pouring rain.On the top of the long marble staircase of the cinema, he slipped, the crutches parted, and he fell, breaking his other leg. Now Hathaway lay, awkwardly spreading his long legs in plaster casts on the bed, and not letting go of the precious racket clutched in his thick hands. He was placed on the fourth floor, where he was lying all alone because of this stupid habit of hitting the ball against the wall. Thrown across the room, the hard, bouncing ball bounced off the wall, and Hathaway would pick it up into the cross net [10] and then send the ball back to the wall.Jenny didn’t cost anything to put an end to this entertainment, but she herself had a son, and she, like no one else, understood that boys of five years old, like Garp, or seventeen, like Hathaway, simply needed to do mindless physical exercises from time to time. Jenny noticed that they seemed to be giving out the accumulated energy.

One thing pissed her off – the awkwardness of Hathaway, who was always losing the ball. She did what she could for him, placed him where he did not interfere with other patients with his knocking.But every time Hathaway lost the ball, he started ringing with might and main – suddenly someone hears, will come and give him the ball. But help was rare, although the lift went up to the fourth floor. Seeing that the elevator was busy, Jenny instantly ran up the stairs and rushed into the room breathless and angry.

– You don’t have to explain what your game is for you, Hathaway, – Jenny declared from the doorway. – But understand, Garp is lost, now I have no time to look for your ball.

Hathaway was, in general, a good-looking fellow, although he was not particularly smart.A lock of reddish hair fell on her smooth, almost devoid of vegetation, completely covering one bright eye. He had a habit of shaking his head, throwing the hair from his face, and for this reason, looking into his face, you often looked into his wide nostrils, especially since he was growth, God forbid.

“Miss Fields,” he called.

Here Jenny noticed that he had no racket in his hands.

– What do you want, Hathaway? She asked. – Sorry, I’m in a hurry. I tell you Garp is lost.I’m looking for Garp.

– A-ah-ah, – handed Hathaway. – It’s a pity, I don’t know how to help you. He looked helplessly at his legs, which were in a cast.

Jenny tapped her bandaged knee lightly with her fingers, as if knocking on the door of the room in which the sleeper might have been.

“Please don’t worry,” she said, and waited for him to remember why he called her, but Hathaway seemed to have forgotten why he raised such a ringing.

– So what did you want? She asked and patted her knee again, this time as if checking to see if there was anyone at the door.- Have you lost the ball?

– No, – he replied, – a racket.

Then both of them, as if by agreement, looked around the room, and he continued:

– I was sleeping. I woke up – I saw she was gone.

Jenny’s first thought was: this is Mekler, the second floor thunderstorm. This guy with a brilliant ironic mind was in the hospital for three or four days every month. At sixteen, he was a heavy smoker, edited dozens of school publications and twice won first place in a competition in classical literature.Mekler despised dining at the table and drank coffee and egg sandwiches at Buster’s Diner. It was there that all his wonderful works were born, which he never submitted on time. Bringing himself to such a life to physical and nervous exhaustion, he got to the hospital bed every month. In the isolation ward, the resourceful Mekler played the most vile tricks, but Jenny still could not catch him red-handed. Once, for example, boiled tadpoles appeared in a teapot with tea brought to the laboratory, and laboratory assistants complained later that the tea gave off fish.The next time he chipped off something cleaner: he filled a condom with egg white and tied it to the doorknob — the door led into Jenny’s room. Only later, having found egg shells in her purse, Jenny realized that the contents of the surprise presented to her were harmless. And that it was Mekler who was responsible for the quiet insanity that hit the third floor of the hospital several years ago, she had no doubts. Why else would the guys who got chickenpox suddenly all as one began to engage in masturbation, and then, holding their precious moisture in their hand, rushed to the laboratory to check under a microscope whether the terrible consequences of the disease threatening them with infertility were already noticeable …

If this were Meckler’s handiwork, Jenny thought, he would probably have punched a hole in the net stretched over the flat end of the cross and left the useless racket in the arms of the sleeping Hathaway.

“Here’s what: Garp has your racket,” Jenny said. – We’ll find him, and the racket will be found.

And for the umpteenth time, she suppressed the urge to reach out and toss away a lock of hair that covered one of the boy’s eyes. Instead, she gently squeezed the big toes that protruded from Hathaway’s cast.

But if Garp was really going to play lacrosse, Jenny wondered, where did he go? Outside? No, it’s unlikely. It was already dark, the ball would be easily lost. Perhaps the only place in the entire building where the selector is not heard is the underground passage connecting the isolation ward with the hospital building.You can’t think of a better place to kick the ball. Jenny knew the guys played there often. Once, after lights out, she herself sent a whole company to sleep – they arranged a sort of heap of small ones there. Jenny took the elevator down to the basement floor. Hathaway is a great guy, she thought. If Garp grows up like this, it will be good. Although it can turn out to be something better.

As slow-witted as Hathaway was, the thought worked for him. And he began to think. God grant that nothing terrible happens to little Garp.What a pity that he cannot go to look for the baby himself. Garp visited Hathaway frequently. A mutilated athlete, both legs in a cast, can you compare him with anyone? Hathaway let Garp paint the plaster splints, and soon, next to his friends’ autographs, round faces and all kinds of monsters born of Garp’s fantasy appeared on his feet next to the autographs of his friends.

Hathaway looked at these childish scribbles, and suddenly an uneasy feeling came over him. He saw his ball lurking between his knees.Hathaway could not feel it through the plaster. He felt funny for a moment – he was also a brood hen hatching an egg. Okay, what about Garp? Couldn’t he have gone to play without the ball?

Pigeons cooed loudly outside the window. And it dawned on Hathaway: pigeons, of course, pigeons! Garp had no intention of playing lacrosse. How many times has he complained to Garp that the pigeons do not let him sleep, they wake him up in the middle of the night with their damn cooing, fussing on the cornice and in the gutter under the peaked roof covered with slate. Pigeons interfered with sleep not only for those who were lying on the top floor of the isolation ward, but for the entire school.The birds felt like real masters here. The workers covered the ridge of the roofs and eaves with wire, but the birds continued to nest in the gutter in dry weather, found refuge in the potholes under the roof, in the weaves of old, stiff ivy. There was no way to keep them away from the school buildings. If not for their continuous cooing! How tired Hathaway is! He even mentioned to Garp that if he had at least one leg intact, he would have gotten to the pigeons. “How?” – asked then Garp, and he replied that pigeons do not like to fly in the dark.He learned useful information about the habits of pigeons from a series of lectures on biology. (Jenny took the course herself.) He told little Garp the following literally:

– At night – it is important that there is no rain – I will climb onto the roof and take them warm right in the gutter. They sit there all night and rustle. On my head.

– How do you catch them? – Garp was curious.

Crossfit Open 18-4. Another hardcore workout for the weekend

On the morning of March 16, details of the new Crossfit Open workout were revealed.This series of five workouts is performed by thousands of athletes around the world in February and March. The best of them qualify for the Crossfit Games, the world’s largest fitness competition. All the rest, having passed through the millstones of “open”, get a good shape, an increase in endurance, relief and muscle mass.

Today we are introducing the readers of “Soviet Sport” to the fourth Open.

Crossfit Open 18-4. How to do

Articles | Crossfit Open 18-1.Hardcore Weekend Workout

New Open offers two rounds of exercises of 21-15-9 reps each. The first circle – deadlift (bar weight for men 102 kg / for women 70 kg), push-ups in a handstand (with the legs resting on the wall). The second round – deadlift (barbell weight for men 143 kg / for women 93 kg), 15th hand walking after each set of the deadlift. You need to meet in the shortest possible time.

What to do if hand-walking is too difficult

The complex standards described above are designed for trained athletes.If you’ve never done the hand-walk exercise, you can replace it with another movement. One of the options is to do 15 meters of the so-called. “Bear gait”: when you move, resting on the floor with your hands and feet. You can watch the technique of “bear walk” in the video below

You can replace with another exercise and push-ups from the handstand. An option is to do jerk shvungs with a barbell instead (weight 42 kg for men / 29 kg for women). If this option turns out to be too difficult: repeat the complex with push-ups from the floor with a clap of your palms.

What to do if the deadlift weight is too high

Articles | Why is there blood and you can faint from the deadlift

To do 21, 15 and 9 repetitions of the deadlift with a 143 kg barbell, and even within the framework of a circular complex, only trained athletes are capable. For the rest, it is better to reduce the weight on the deadline to avoid injury.

For example, men can reduce the weight of the bar to 80 kg in the first circle and 100 kg in the second. Women – up to 56 and 75 kg.If this is too much, remove weights up to 60-80 kg (men) and 40-60 kg (women).

What you need to know before performing the complex

Deadlift with a lot of repetitions and not the smallest weights will heavily load the lower back.

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How does the material composition of Gait shafts affect their performance?

Cost-Benefit Analysis: Are Gait Shafts Worth the Investment?

Do the performance benefits of Gait shafts justify their price compared to budget options?

Gait Shafts in Competitive Play: Regulations and Acceptance

Are there any specific Gait shaft models that are particularly popular in professional lacrosse?

Sticks – Gait Lacrosse Shaft

Gait TORQ Lacrosse Head | Lacrosse Unlimited

Gary Gait previews 2021 Syracuse women’s lacrosse season (see schedule)

Best 7 Cheap Lacrosse Heads Reviewed & Rated

Top 7 Lacrosse Heads

1. Warrior Evo 5 Unstrung Lacrosse Head

2. Maverik Lacrosse Tank Universal Unstrung Head

3. STX Lacrosse Stallion 700 Unstrung Head

4. East Coast Dyes – Rebel Offense Strung Lacrosse Head

5. Warrior Rabil Unstrung Lacrosse Head

6. Warrior Evo Warp Pro Lacrosse Head

7. Brine Clutch Elite Unstrung Lacrosse Head

Best Lacrosse Head

1. Strung or Unstrung?

2. Head Shape in Relation to Position

3. Pockets

4. Legality

5. Different Types of Lacrosse Heads

Head Offset

Head Stiffness

The Scoop

How Do I Know Which Head to Get?

1. Beginners Lacrosse Head

2. Intermediate Lacrosse Head

3. Advanced Lacrosse Head

4. Elite Players for Lacrosse Head

Lacrosse Sticks – Tagged “debeer-lacrosse” – National Sports

Step Up Your Lacrosse Game With the Power Shaft

Lacrosse – Page 32 of 44

Ianzito leads, thrives in Syracuse’s trademark up-and-down style of play

Syracuse men’s lacrosse beats Ohio State, Robert Morris in final scrimmages; SU ice hockey sweeps Robert Morris

Syracuse ranked No. 1 in national poll

Syracuse assistant coach named to US national team

Galasso to miss 2013 season with injury, surgery

Scrimmage performances give Syracuse hope at faceoff X

Marasco plays behind net as a feeder in pair of scrimmage wins

Syracuse adjusts to rule changes in season-opening scrimmages

Mike Daniello out for 2013 season

Orange picked to finish 2nd in Big East

Women’s lacrosse routs Jacksonville; Ice hockey falls at Mercyhurst; Track kicks off in Gotham Cup; Tennis loses at USF

Megill, Marasco chosen in 2013 MLL Draft

Transfers provide boost, integrate into team

Daniello home; SU future remains uncertain

Syracuse’s fast-paced style benefits from NCAA rule changes

Coming off disappointing season, pressure-free Syracuse expects to climb back to winning ways

News by tag overwatch, page 9 of 31

Peace from Garp

Crossfit Open 18-4. Another hardcore workout for the weekend

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