Jonathots Daily Blog
(2184)
(Transcript)
Starting the seventh grade scared the crap out of me.
Actually, that particular cliché doesn’t fit very well because when you’re entering junior high school in a new building, the idea of any sound or bodily fluid coming out of your being is completely terrifying.
You want to simultaneously be invisible and also appreciated, which of course, is not only socially impossible, but scientifically implausible.
I had spent the week before school began begging my mother to allow me to go out for the football team. She was afraid I would get injured. This was a maternal prophetic sensation, long before the recent onslaught of concussions and head injuries. What was comical, though, about this assertion on her part was that I was nearly six feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds. The coach joked with her, when trying to solicit her support, that it would be more likely that I would hurt other children.
I whined, cajoled, pleaded, promised, praised, complimented and cleaned my room up enough to get her to agree to allow me to try out for the team.
So September 4th, 1965, was not just the first day of horror in the new junior high school. It was also my first day to go out after school and practice with the football team.
The trials continued when they were unable to find a pair of football pants to fit me. (This was the era when men’s sizes stopped at extra-large, and anyone who needed anything bigger must order it from the sheep herders of Tibet.) So I wore a pair of tennis shoes and blue Dickey work pants to work out with the other guys, who were in suitable apparel. (They did find a helmet that fit my head, since the term fat-head is merely an urban legend.)
It became obvious to me immediately, on that small practice field, what I liked and what I didn’t.
- I loved the game.
- I loved tackling.
- I loved thinking about what was going to happen next.
On the other hand, I hated exercise in all of its contorted, convoluted and fastidiously constructed forms. After all, every exercise program is really geared to skinny people–even the ones which insist they are trying to appeal to the obese. Their speculations always exceed our limitations.
I hated sprints, calisthenics, too much running of any type, and all the drills which they insisted were essential for becoming a great football player.
I endured the sport for three years, but finally my laziness regarding exercise overtook my love of the gridiron.
Maybe if I’d had the right kick in the pants from an authority figure, or perhaps mercy at the right moments and toughness at others, I might have continued playing the game. I don’t know.
But because I didn’t tackle laziness on the football field, it took me too many years to overcome that gooey, drippy vice that drags one down, draining off potential.
So the next time you run across a kid who has ability, but not much drive, please don’t assume that you should leave him alone.
I was left alone. And fascinatingly enough–it was just lonely.
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