Football Player Enters Third Day On Back With Imploring Arm Extended

Sept. 24, 2019--Carson, Calif.: It was lights out in the Dignity Health Sports Park as the last member of the clean-up crew and stadium staff exited Sunday night following the Chargers’ loss to the Texans, but the stadium wasn’t empty as Texans defensive end J. J. Tortuga lay in quiet contemplation as he has been since early in the third quarter with his right hand extended in an earnest entreaty to his teammates to help him up off his duff.

In a rare oversight and thanks in part to the way the sunlight streamed into the eastern end of the stadium, many have speculated, Tortuga’s teammates completely missed his beseeching appendage after a routine play, leaving him lying prostrate and pleading, his hand outstretched but overlooked. Tortuga was to be replaced in the following play, and so when the game continued, no one even noticed his absence.

Plays turned into hours, and hours turned into days, and now Tortuga, fully suited up and still supine, is famished and facing a reality in which his supplications for assistance in overcoming recumbence are ignored.

“I’ve never had to stand up after a play using only the strength of my muscular and chiseled thighs,” said a stunned and deflated Tortuga today, as he entered the third day of his debacle. “I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. I am a tortured turtle, lying on my back with my arms reaching out to an indifferent and callous world. In my despair, I see only a cold night sky,” Tortuga said in an uncharacteristic burst of verbosity, probably due to his long stretch of unavoidable reflection and soul-searching.

Tortuga continued pontificating to an empty arena, not realizing the reporter and her crew had wrapped up the interview and walked away.

As the LA Galaxy vs. Montreal soccer match played around him Monday, Tortuga told a reporter he noticed that the soccer players helped each other up after each career-ending injury that caused them to fall to the ground clutching both knees alternately, and screaming and wincing in agony until a penalty was called and they bounded back to their positions.

“I’m not proud of this,” Tortuga told a reporter standing next to him as he lay on the sideline during Monday’s soccer game, assuming the reporter was there to interview him, “but when I was in high school and college, we really gave those soccer twerps a hard time, calling them things like ‘twinkle toes’ and whatnot. They may have been soft and liked poetry and stuff, but at least they help a fellow out who needs a hand after he falls.”

Tortuga said in the accidental interview that he has “learned a lot” about himself and promises that if his son ever comes home and says he wants to play soccer, he’ll “try not to overreact or disown him or anything.”

Tortuga said he misses his family and dreams of someday having a home-cooked meal again, but that his most pressing need at the moment is a bathroom.

Having no protocol in place for such a fiasco, the NFL have declined to comment other than to state they are “looking into the matter and hope it can be resolved in a manner amicable to all parties involved.”