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Iīve got a confession to make. A major one. Believe me, this isnīt easy. But Iīll just go ahead and force it right out of my lips.
Are you ready for this?
Okay. Here goes.
I rooted against my own football team in high school. Bullard High School in Fresno, California, Class of 1968.
Iīm a traitor. A subversive. A coward. I must also be a bad American. What kind of person would root against their own high school football team?
Let me explain. Hear me out.
Some of the boys in my class had by the age of sixteen and seventeen attained the early growth of a manīs body. They looked like Brad Pitt. Towering under them was me. I looked like I was eight years old.
I couldnīt be like they were. They were men. I was a child. They dated the gorgeous blonde cheerleaders. They were big men on campus. I was afraid of them, in awe of them, a tiny big-nosed runt with pimples who was always aware of both his frailness and ugliness.
We were an all-white (no African Americans) school from the rich side of town.
Our school produced some great football teams, and this was a stellar year (1968). We were undefeated, demolishing every other team. The local Fresno Bee newspaper sang our praises, the Bullard High Knights (the press nicknamed our quarterback Mighty Monty).
Now, high school for me because of my real or imagined physical infirmities and low self esteem, was a traumatic experience. We were required, forced, mandated, in other words, you had to go, to pep rallies honoring our football team.
We had to cheer these guys.
Some of them had slapped me around, or threatened to. I was not allowed in their clique. I didnīt hang out with them. I was after all, a little wimp.
Why would I cheer people who thought of me as a lesser being, an underling, and who treated me as such? Cheer and worship people who got their jollies at my expense?
Why would I cheer them?
The football coach, whose real life name was Norwood Eben, also taught a typing class, and I had him for a teacher. I did something to offend him; I canīt remember what it was, so it must have been minor.
Maybe, itīs who he thought I was he didnīt like.
One day, he mocked me in the class as a little wimpy coward in front of the other students. Now, in fact, I was a wimpy little coward. But this was devastating to me. The class yearbook would run a huge picture of him and describe him as "a friend to all."
Iīm sorry Norwood, Iīm sorry about saying this, but you didnīt act like you were my friend. Maybe you just couldnīt see at the time that I was a frail, sensitive, somewhat effeminate, troubled, scared little boy completely overwhelmed by the pain of trying to grow up.
Maybe you just couldnīt see it from my eyes.
Maybe you had a bad day.
You werenīt my friend. But you sure loved your golden god-like boys on the football team.
I tried to deal with the situation by hiding as best I could. I turned into a hermit. I only showed up to those school events I was required to. I skipped everything else, every other activity, every experience that should have brought a few fond memories (I donīt think my parents were even vaguely aware of my troubles. At the time, it was thought by many adults that teenagers donīt have troubles).
Our team continued to smash every other school. It was going to be a perfect championship season. Not one defeat. We were invincible.
For some reason, maybe my mom forced me to go; I ended up attending one game, the big game. We were facing a team from the poor side of town. They had some poorer whites, Mexican kids, and a few African Americans (some of the parents from our school referred to them as jigs, short for jigaboo).
They kicked our butts. To the astonishment of the crowd. I watched our team get slaughtered, right in front of my eyes.
This is painful for me to relate. I felt good. I enjoyed it. Sitting there, lonely, hideously ugly (I thought), I was happy, watching them get wiped out. When we chanted, "hit īem again, hit īem again, harder harder!" I was chanting for the other team. And they did hit us harder.
Why would I cheer my own guys to glory when they relegated me to the status of class nigger, when they treated me bad?
Collectively, our senior class never got over this single defeat. Our yearbook sadly, piously said, recounting it for all posterity, "the team didnīt lose, Bullard lost, and it lost to a good team."
In other words, the entire school lost.
I agree with the "good team" part, but the rest was perfectly Freudian. In other words, the aspirations and the unique differences and talents between 600 students, half of them girls who didnīt play football at all; it came down to this, the ability of fifteen hand-picked rough-neck boy-men to knock heads.
This is the same dysfunctional paranoia and mythology that leads adults who support a political party to think their party never makes a mistake, and the other political party never does anything right. Itīs them against us. Unfortunately, itīs also a mentality we carry into our dealings with other countries.
Just because we lost one game, had one off-night, because we werenīt perfect, we all lost.
Well excuse my French. But I didnīt fuc.īin lose a thing. In fact, I gained.
They (the football players) didnīt represent me.
I had already lost part of my humanity in high school.
Those guys, the big men, they lost. They were the ones who practiced and reaped the glory, and reveled in their superiority. Itīs only justice they experience a lesson in humility.
Iīm sorry, but I loved it!
I think the one valuable thing to me that I came away from this is, that ever since, Iīve had a well-developed empathy for the underdog, because of my own painful experience as one.
In the end, this was better than scoring a touchdown.
Copyright 2008 by SammonSays.com
Are you ready for this?
Okay. Here goes.
I rooted against my own football team in high school. Bullard High School in Fresno, California, Class of 1968.
Iīm a traitor. A subversive. A coward. I must also be a bad American. What kind of person would root against their own high school football team?
Let me explain. Hear me out.
Some of the boys in my class had by the age of sixteen and seventeen attained the early growth of a manīs body. They looked like Brad Pitt. Towering under them was me. I looked like I was eight years old.
I couldnīt be like they were. They were men. I was a child. They dated the gorgeous blonde cheerleaders. They were big men on campus. I was afraid of them, in awe of them, a tiny big-nosed runt with pimples who was always aware of both his frailness and ugliness.
We were an all-white (no African Americans) school from the rich side of town.
Our school produced some great football teams, and this was a stellar year (1968). We were undefeated, demolishing every other team. The local Fresno Bee newspaper sang our praises, the Bullard High Knights (the press nicknamed our quarterback Mighty Monty).
Now, high school for me because of my real or imagined physical infirmities and low self esteem, was a traumatic experience. We were required, forced, mandated, in other words, you had to go, to pep rallies honoring our football team.
We had to cheer these guys.
Some of them had slapped me around, or threatened to. I was not allowed in their clique. I didnīt hang out with them. I was after all, a little wimp.
Why would I cheer people who thought of me as a lesser being, an underling, and who treated me as such? Cheer and worship people who got their jollies at my expense?
Why would I cheer them?
The football coach, whose real life name was Norwood Eben, also taught a typing class, and I had him for a teacher. I did something to offend him; I canīt remember what it was, so it must have been minor.
Maybe, itīs who he thought I was he didnīt like.
One day, he mocked me in the class as a little wimpy coward in front of the other students. Now, in fact, I was a wimpy little coward. But this was devastating to me. The class yearbook would run a huge picture of him and describe him as "a friend to all."
Iīm sorry Norwood, Iīm sorry about saying this, but you didnīt act like you were my friend. Maybe you just couldnīt see at the time that I was a frail, sensitive, somewhat effeminate, troubled, scared little boy completely overwhelmed by the pain of trying to grow up.
Maybe you just couldnīt see it from my eyes.
Maybe you had a bad day.
You werenīt my friend. But you sure loved your golden god-like boys on the football team.
I tried to deal with the situation by hiding as best I could. I turned into a hermit. I only showed up to those school events I was required to. I skipped everything else, every other activity, every experience that should have brought a few fond memories (I donīt think my parents were even vaguely aware of my troubles. At the time, it was thought by many adults that teenagers donīt have troubles).
Our team continued to smash every other school. It was going to be a perfect championship season. Not one defeat. We were invincible.
For some reason, maybe my mom forced me to go; I ended up attending one game, the big game. We were facing a team from the poor side of town. They had some poorer whites, Mexican kids, and a few African Americans (some of the parents from our school referred to them as jigs, short for jigaboo).
They kicked our butts. To the astonishment of the crowd. I watched our team get slaughtered, right in front of my eyes.
This is painful for me to relate. I felt good. I enjoyed it. Sitting there, lonely, hideously ugly (I thought), I was happy, watching them get wiped out. When we chanted, "hit īem again, hit īem again, harder harder!" I was chanting for the other team. And they did hit us harder.
Why would I cheer my own guys to glory when they relegated me to the status of class nigger, when they treated me bad?
Collectively, our senior class never got over this single defeat. Our yearbook sadly, piously said, recounting it for all posterity, "the team didnīt lose, Bullard lost, and it lost to a good team."
In other words, the entire school lost.
I agree with the "good team" part, but the rest was perfectly Freudian. In other words, the aspirations and the unique differences and talents between 600 students, half of them girls who didnīt play football at all; it came down to this, the ability of fifteen hand-picked rough-neck boy-men to knock heads.
This is the same dysfunctional paranoia and mythology that leads adults who support a political party to think their party never makes a mistake, and the other political party never does anything right. Itīs them against us. Unfortunately, itīs also a mentality we carry into our dealings with other countries.
Just because we lost one game, had one off-night, because we werenīt perfect, we all lost.
Well excuse my French. But I didnīt fuc.īin lose a thing. In fact, I gained.
They (the football players) didnīt represent me.
I had already lost part of my humanity in high school.
Those guys, the big men, they lost. They were the ones who practiced and reaped the glory, and reveled in their superiority. Itīs only justice they experience a lesson in humility.
Iīm sorry, but I loved it!
I think the one valuable thing to me that I came away from this is, that ever since, Iīve had a well-developed empathy for the underdog, because of my own painful experience as one.
In the end, this was better than scoring a touchdown.
Copyright 2008 by SammonSays.com
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