Memories: Football 1
Snap the Whip (1872) — Winslow Homer, American painter
Why was I so obsessed with football?
Some hypotheses:
It allowed me to connect to something bigger than myself
It allowed me to channel my anger into something constructive
It allowed me to hide behind a jersey and a helmet
I was good at it
There must have been something more to it though. I wanted to win more than anything. I would have died for it. It was my life's purpose.
My first year of tackle football was in the sixth grade. In the small Southern Oregon town where I grew up, teams were determined by both age and weight. As a relatively big 11-year old (i.e. sixth grader), I was placed on a team made up mostly of seventh- and eighth-graders. Although I fulfilled the municipal athletic commission of middle school boys sizing requirements, I was terribly uncoordinated. I was on the cusp of puberty but still equipped with a boy's body. Predictably, I played the minimum league requirement number of snaps but mostly watched from the sidelines. The physical chasm from an 11-year old to a 13-year old is infinite.
That year I mostly only learned that I needed to be tougher. At least once, I cried silently in the huddle during practice after getting manhandled the play before. I wasn't athletic enough to play a skill position so I played offensive and defensive line, despite being one of the smallest and weakest boys.
Ostensibly, my team was pretty good. I have no idea the quality of our competition looking back on it (probably not good) but we managed to make it to our league championship game. If we won that game, we would have moved on to some kind of regional championship, having graduated out of our city pool. Our matchup was against your typical cross-town rival—a classic red versus blue situation (we were red)—who we had defeated during the regular season. Winning was guaranteed considering our superior components: coaches, athletes, schema, strategy, etc etc. Plus, we had already beaten them. Case closed.
I learned two valuable lessons after that championship: Nothing is guaranteed (that's why you play the game) and beating a team twice in a single season is significantly harder than beating the same team once.
I didn't play a second in the championship game yet this was the first experience for my young naive heart of something akin to heartbreak. I was so sure going into that game that I would leave a champion. The unfulfilled expectations are what hurt the most.
After the game, my mom took me to get my favorite meal. I don't know if she did it to cheer me up or if the plan was to get sushi as a celebration all along, but it didn't make me feel better. At the time, eating out was a rare occurrence for my family, and eating sushi especially felt like such a luxurious treat. Unfortunately, I don't remember actually enjoying delicious salmon rolls that night. I do remember, however, sitting in the car crying quietly as Matchbox Twenty's "How Far We've Come" played on the radio.
I already cared so much. I was so desperate for the life that comes after winning it all. Perhaps I believed that in that life, all my fear and shame would be wiped clean as well.