Don't Even Look at Me, Peyton Manning

Today, for the first time in my existence, I got invited to join a fantasy football league. Sure, it was a pretty glorious moment, but in the same breath, it was a moment filled with complete and utter anxiety because I do not follow professional sports at all. I keep up with the SEC because it's part of the contract I signed as a Tennessee resident 23 years ago, but other than that, I don't really dabble in the sports community. There's a whole lot of suppressed memories that remind me that's not the world that I belong in, and I'm okay with that--it's similar to how I feel about not being welcomed in Anacostia, or most restaurants with vegan options. When asked by my roommate about how competitive I was going to be about it, I explained that I really didn't care if I won or I lost because I was mostly in it because of a heightened sense of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and the prospect of delicious hot wings. But obviously, I was going to need some help getting started.
I asked my friend Mark who invited me if he could offer some assistance, and he pretty much told me that this is not an aspect of life where people help each other: this is a part of life where people win. I respect that, but I also respect my dad, Wendell's, advice that he gave to me a long time ago, "If at first you don't succeed, find something you're good at." So, I pretty much gave up on it immediately. I don't care enough to actually learn about the players... that would cut in to the amount of time I have looking up Jennifer Lawrence GIFs and inside information about the 10th season of Grey's Anatomy (speaking of, let's all take a moment of silence for Sandra Oh's departure in nine very short months). I had no interest in learning, let alone mastering, the art of fake football--if I were going to do that, I would have just played. People throughout my life always said, "I'm kind of surprised you didn't play football," which is a nice way of saying, "Hey, I think you're kind of fat, but in a useful way." In fact, I played a couple of sports growing up, but none ever panned out: too many yellow cards in soccer for running into people as hard as I could, never placed on the actual volleyball team because I threw volleyballs really hard at practice, and constant benching in softball because I got bored and sat down in the outfield. Some people would say that it all comes down to the fact that I'm not patient or disciplined enough to be an athlete, but I think what, or whom, it actually comes down to is Peyton Manning.
One day in first grade, it was announced that we would have a special guest coming to class... a friend of one of our classmate's families. Mrs. Ellis could barely get the name out without shuddering in his woven-knit UT orange teacher vest. Peyton Manning would be making an appearance, and most everyone in class continued to pick their noses or playing with their toys, but I remember being so excited. As someone who ingested as much culture as he could from an early age, I knew who Peyton was. So, I went home and told my parents--my dad said UT football was stupid, and the whole thing was rigged, which also reflected his opinion on every Presidential election leading back to Reagan, and the outcome of any given season of American Idol. But my mom understood where I was coming from, so we drove down to Wal-Mart so that I could pick myself up a disposable camera. There was going to be picture evidence of how good of friends Peyton and I would be. I imagined that he would teach me about football, give me piggy back rides, and eventually, we'd go hang out in Neyland Stadium... I could hardly sleep the night before, I was so excited.
But the day came, and naturally some overbearing parents who caught wind of the Peyton-sighting showed up to class. Finally, the time was approaching for me to meet Peyton, aka MAH BEST FRIEND, aka my future personal-Judas. I stepped up to the desk he was sitting at with shaky hands, unsure of what I should do with the camera and the piece of paper and all the emotion. He didn't look as big as I imagined, which is probably because I envisioned him to be a giant. He didn't say hi, he just reached and got my paper and signed it. I stood there nervously and asked if he would take a picture with me, and all I heard was "No." Mrs. Ellis, in her totally baffled state, ushered me away from the table.
I took the autograph to the back of the room by me and stood with a giant knot in my throat. Peyton, why had you forsaken me? I couldn't even bare to be in the same room, which should have been a tell tell sign that I would go on to have a lot of resentment and boundary issues in my life. I didn't want to look at him because he had betrayed me. We were supposed to be best friends. He was going to be like the big brother I never had, notwithstanding the older brother I already had. I looked down at the signature, which proved that he had taken absolutely NO time to practice cursive in elementary school, and I ripped it up. I threw it in the garbage, and I never looked back. I went home that night and threw the camera on the couch, and said I wanted nothing more to do with Peyton Manning or football, which was not too much of a stretch because I didn't have a lot to do with it before. I refused to root for him, and when they won the title in 1998, I made a conscious decision not to eat Tostitos for a solid chunk of time. (Okay, probably for like, two weeks, but I really love salsa. Get off my back).
Many-a-Peyton-fan along the way has tried to make excuses for him: he was probably just flustered or he wasn't allowed to take pictures or maybe I'm just telling the story wrong. Regardless, Kathy bought me a five dollar disposable camera, and he really didn't have to be such a twat waffle about the whole situation. I'm sure he has no recollection of me--though we may never know exactly how (other than reputable athletic ability and an unprecedented presence at the University of Tennessee), he's seemed to make a career out of the sport and has probably met too many people to count. But when people watch his Saturday Night Live skit of him working with United Way and a bunch of children, only to physically and verbally abuse them, people giggle because they think, Oh Peyton, you would never talk to children that way. Well guys... Peyton would... Peyton did.
So, I eventually decided to do the fantasy football league. My team's name is "Peyton Manning Sucks," and I plan on filling the necessary positions with people that have really cool names. But most of all, I want this fantasy league to be vindication. I do care about winning... not over the other participants, but over Peyton and the ghost of that seven year old who was totally screwed over by one of the most inflated egos to ever grace the beautiful green grass of Neyland Stadium. I wanted a hero, and I got Mr. Manning. I would have even taken that alcoholic, Tyler Bray as a class visitor before Peyton Manning. From that point on, I focused on heroes that exemplified the skills that I wanted to emulate, like Tina Wesson from Survivor (I will tell you the much more gracious, heartwarming story about meeting her later), or David Sedaris.

Our Favorite Sins

My friend Anna and I were in her bed watching Grey's Anatomy one night during my junior year. Callie's mother told her that she would not be attending her wedding to Arizona because she couldn't stand the thought of her daughter marrying a woman--she couldn't stand the thought of her daughter, who she loved, spending the rest of her life in Hell. I immediately became disgusted, while Anna literally cheered the mother on. Immediately, I turned around and looked at Anna as if she had slapped me across the face. Anna is one of my best friends, but there she sat, cheering on a fictional mother as she told her fictional daughter that she would be spending her eternity in Hell for... marrying a woman. Anna and I immediately got into discourse with Anna's greatest defense being the morality of the Christian religion, her upbringing, the book of Leviticus, and the very limited references made in the New Testament (let it be noted, none were said by Jesus). I, in response, quoted a theme that occurs repeatedly over the course of both the Old and New Testaments: judgement. We'll discuss the aftermath of that conversation later.

This week, Jason Collins of the Wizards, formerly the Celtics, made the very bold announcement that he is gay--the first athlete of America's four biggest professional sports. I wasn't going to put much commentary in the conversation because I had already tried to state my position last year during the whole Chick-Fil-A debacle (oh, you didn't read What a Waste of Waffle Fries?!). I actually defended the idea of purchasing food from Chick-Fil-A. But what inspires me to address this Jason Collins issue is the comparisons that have been drawn throughout this week. I hear about how Tim Tebow has been persecuted for being a Christian and how terribly he has been bashed as a Christian player, while Collins is being revered for being an openly gay athlete--and that's where my issue comes up. Tebow, a Christian, has been bashed? As a child, I used to try and make the case about what it was like to be white or to be a boy or to even be a Christian. There's a lot of prejudice in the world, and I'm not saying that there's not prejudice against white people or men or Christians, because there is. There truly is. But in my twenty-three years of life, I can say that I've never been told that being any of those things was wrong, and I was surely never told that I would go to Hell for them. My eternal damnation was never on the line because of my race or gender or religion. And I dare say, this is not the Crusades anymore. Christians are not blamed for blowing up buildings; Christians were not gassed or burned in small confined spaces. If the Christian religion's biggest current hurdle is being criticized on MSNBC, then I think we're doing okay.

Posted the morning after the Collins
announcement

And I say we because I, myself, am a Christian. I find my religion to be immensely personal and not the topic of frequent conversation. My prayers are mine and God's, my beliefs are only applicable to me because I don't think it's my place to determine the rights and wrongs of others. I struggle enough doing right on my own. But I find it hard to explain to agnostics, atheists, non-believers what our message is and who we want to be when in the midst of our own "persecution," we use announcements like Collins as a "general reminder" that homosexuality is a damning sin. 
I don't write this to defend the followers of my religion or to convince others whether homosexuality is a sin or not. And I definitely don't write this because I'm a lover of sports. I'm an atypical cookie cutter man--I find very little interest in sports. I recently joined a volleyball league in DC, and it's practically a miracle that I did that because sports were the source of my unhappiness for the longest time. When I tried the whole sports thing in elementary school, that was the first time someone called me a girl. Toward the end of elementary school, when I wasn't coordinated enough, that was the first time I was called gay. When I moved to middle school, that changed to faggot. I wanted nothing to do with sports because when you weren't good enough, that's the kind of thing you became: a joke, a mockery, what others observed as a second rate human--and then after getting called that long enough in the sports setting, it began to stick. I was called those things outside of the game, and then it was my eternity that was in question. I went from not being good at sports to being eternally damned.
So when I saw the story of Jason Collins this week, I nearly cried reading it. He spoke of why he kept his sexuality a secret for so very long. He talked about how no one had done this in a major sport before him. He brought up the way that gay people have been viewed in the sports community, and then just for a paragraph or so, he talked about his faith. He spoke about his religious roots and how he still holds on to those things he learned, and he spoke about judgement. But when I think about Collins' proclamation to the world, I don't see it as some giant thing for the professional sports world--though it is. I don't expect a string of players to come forth and announce their homosexuality. I do, however, anticipate that this is the beginning of a new normal--where it's no longer okay to call someone a faggot on the playground because he doesn't know how to properly throw a football. Because calling someone  gay should not be an insult. And for the gay kid that does know how to throw a football (please teach me--I can't throw a spiral to save my life), I imagine that this is the beginning of a time when we'll evaluate his skills and not his personal life.
So, back to Anna. I left Anna's room that night out of frustration. We didn't go back to discuss the conversation because there was no way I could convince her and no way she could convince me. We didn't even mention the topic for months. And then one night, she sat with me on the porch of our dorm and she began to cry. She told me that everything she had ever known had been turned upside down. She explained to me the gay people that she had met and how great of people they are. She told me, If you ever told me you were gay, I just couldn't believe that alone would send you to Hell forever. I just can't believe that, and it doesn't make sense to me anymore. I don't look at that conversation as a victory--like I had beaten her or something. I did, however, look at it as a victory because her world had been challenged and for once, the idea that one sin could damn someone to Hell forever became incomprehensible to her.
And that's what I urge the world to do--to quit putting weight on your favorite sin, or any sin for that matter. Worry about yourself and quit trying to interpret what God views as okay or not okay in other people. Do not use the triumph of humanity as a crutch for an unrelated agenda. We did not tell the world this week whether or not it's moral to be gay--that's honestly not a question that anyone should be discussing in a public forum. But with it being such a point of contention, ask yourself if you are moral--in every sense of the word. Ask yourself if you've sinned, and then cite James 2:10. I do not see homosexuality as a sin, but I do see the persecution of others in the vanity of your own beliefs to be. We moved forward this week--we're one step closer to eradicating the terrible stigma that comes with "being different." And I don't think Jesus could be happier about it--his words in The Bible are meant to push our humanity forward. It's surely not meant to be used as a roadblock to keep us further separated.

Brocation

So, I've self-admittedly never done too well with boys, or boy-like things, or the whole let's compare penises mentality. I like my penis; I think it's a real nice penis. It's been a recurring theme in my life (the struggle with males, not my penis), and honestly I'm just too emotional for the "your mom is fat and ugly and stupid" banter... I hear it, and I go home and tell my mom how beautiful she is, as if she has a wire implanted on me and can hear all the conversations that are had when I try to do the bro thing. So I stick with the things I shine at: Grey's Anatomy, matching my belt to my shoes, having an excellent command of early 2000s pop lyrics, and a keen sense for finding the nearest pizza for under ten dollars. You could say I have quite the skill set.
But occasionally, I get the inclination to "bro out." It always ends in the most devastating way because it's kind of like when you tell someone that you're fluent in Spanish, and someone asks you to have a conversation with them. I've done it with: an interest in sports, the seven year stint that I tried hunting with my dad, the summer I only drank alcohol that cost less than five dollars, among other things, but no bro-ing out experience was more valiant and admirable than my attempt at brocation. I present it to you diary-style:
Prologue
By my own personal definition, a "brocation" is a vacation that you take with your bros (or in my case, your bro [singular]) to a "bitchin" location so you can, you know, mack on the honeys and stuff. So during my freshman year of college, I was going through an assortment of things that young boys at liberal arts colleges go through: self-identity crisis, mild family issues, and the establishment of a friend group in a place where I didn't have too many friends. So in hopes of normalizing things a little bit, I tried to do what seemed like the most logical thing to do: find a fellow dude and prepare for a spring break trip. In retrospect, maybe I should have reconsidered my choice, if I really wanted that "dude" experience, but with little time left and a pressing feeling that I needed some kind of vacation, I went to my best friend Ellison.
Two Days Before
Ellison and I weren't too different our freshman year, and he seemed to be the most willing person around to listen to all the issues I was going through. Without any idea of what he was getting into, he agreed to take the trip with me. When I went home to ask my parents' permission (because that's what you do when you're 18?), they really had no idea who Ellison was. I just kind of assured them that it was all going to be okay, and that they owed me this... which in retrospect was probably even more melodramatic than the trip itself. In just a matter of days, Ellison and I got into his sea foam green Toyota Prius, appropriately named "the anti-boner" and took off for Myrtle Beach.
Day One
Our plans were shaky at best, and at the end of the day, we were headed toward Cherry Grove Beach, which ended up being the part of Myrtle Beach where young Jewish families and older couples over 60 go, which is pretty representative of our ambitions at the time. The entire trip down to Myrtle Beach was set to Led Zepplin I, II, III, and IV, which I agreed to only because of it's manly qualities; other than that, most of my time on the trip down was spent sleeping, taking pictures of the ride down (like the one above), or singing Brocation all I ever wanted, brocation, have to get away to myself.
And once we got there, Ellison had already searched the area on his iPhone (the first of our friends to have that absurd technology) and located the nearest MagiQuest in the area. Originally, I had all these plans about how we would go out on the beach and have this very stereotypical spring break, but it didn't really happen.
Day Two
Ellison went out on the beach for a minute, but then he quickly retreated from the sunlight hopped in his car and went to MagiQuest, which is... in case you didn't know, an interactive video game where you fight things with a wand. I, on the other hand, went to the beach. I took a picture of a black couple (with their permission), and then I fell asleep. I got second degree burns all over my body.
Day Three
Ellison apparently bought a week-long pass to MagiQuest. I couldn't move out of the bed. A Mexican woman tried to come in and change our sheets, and I think she told me to get up. I couldn't understand, so we had an argument in Spanglish. I won. Ellison eventually came back with aloe, and we watched HBO... you know, because we could.
Day Four
The Mexican woman came back. I didn't win this time.
Day Five

As an 18 year old, these are the kind of things I did with
pictures: a clear indication I was not a bro.

I had healed enough that we decided to go get lunch. I walked around MagiQuest as a visitor, in the same way that a lot of parents do for the players that don't have their driver's license yet. I tried to play miniature golf, but the sun was too much, even through clothing. We decided to visit our friends in the area, and their motel room didn't have carpet, but rather astro turf. The entire motel room smelled like burning rags, which turned out to be marijuana, and there was large fruit with alcohol bottles shoved inside of it. We decided that we were nervous with out surroundings, kind of like a dog, so we left.
Day Six
We drove home, and my parents met me at Ellison's house. We had pie, and I think I might have shed a layer of skin in the Berryhills' kitchen. My parents took me home, and I kind of missed the Led Zepplin.
Post-trip
I concluded that maybe I wasn't meant for the regular kind of spring break that all the other kids were taking, and maybe I would never be. There's no way of really knowing, but it never kept me from trying. Since our trip, I've taken other approaches to trying to be more of a man, but at the end of the day, it's just kind of exhausting. If I learned anything about my four day bed-rest, one day indoor video game experience, it's that there's not one definition of a man, and when you try to do something for any other reason that wanting to do it, you kind of screw yourself over in the process. Being a dude is hard, and it's not for everyone, and I think if Ellison and I took one thing away from our lackluster adventures, it's that being a bro is not as fun as it looks.

Mommies Get Tired, Too

When I was younger, there was always something that I wanted my mom to do for/with me. There was a television show or some kind of homework or a shirt that absolutely had to be washed before the next day or even worse, I wanted her to do something physical. I'm not exactly sure why I wanted her to jump on the trampoline or walk down the road or practice soccer with me, but it seemed logical at the time. My mom's energy was limitless, and as far as I was concerned, it all belonged to me. It wasn't as if she worked or cooked dinner or did all of our laundry... the rest of her time was supposed to belong to me, or that's what I thought until I had my first weekend as a Mommy myself.
I guess my entry to mommyhood started on Friday. I knew as soon as I woke up, I felt different and not because of some excruciating labor or anything like that... I decided to skip that step of mommyhood. I walked into the kitchen of our apartment and looked at the leftover pasta with homemade creamy feta sauce that I had made the night before. I like trying new recipes; it's my time to remember who I was when I was younger: creative, hopeful. But of course, when Andrew came home from work, he rudely overlooked the dinner I made, the dinner that he was two hours late for. Didn't it matter that I had cooked that evening? Wasn't it good enough? No. He opted for a sandwich instead, and as I looked at the pasta, I realized just how unappreciated I was. But because of my unrelenting spirit, I decided to sweep the apartment, but no one cared. Eleanor and Marsha would have been so proud of me because the entire floor was spotless, but alas, no one noted it. And then when we went out for "happy hour" that night, I drank more drinks than anyone else. I could feel their judgment. I could visibly see the terrible vibes heading my way, but when a mommy works as hard as I do cooking and sweeping and watching half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows 2 and the last fifteen minutes of No Strings Attached, I feel like I deserved all three of those margaritas.
And then on Saturday, I did the most mommy thing I could think of: I spent the day going off to antique stores and thrift stores by myself. Sure, I left Ben at the apartment sleeping, but he's stayed by himself before; he could find something to eat for lunch. It was "me time;" a moment for me to go and enjoy the things that old people had once owned, then left to someone in their will, only to be market at a completely unaffordable price. I enjoyed looking through old newspapers and furniture, measuring cups marked for 45 dollars and the occasional affordable, but completely impractical, cigar tin. And then after that, I made friends with an old woman and met her and her life partner at their house to pick up a free record player. I then swung by the Goodwill to pick up a Carole King album to test on my record player-- my favorite one, Tapestry. And as I carried it to the register, I had realized that maybe this mommy metaphor had gotten out of control. I was standing in a secondhand store, running my finger along a Carole King album and reflecting on how I had fallen in love with the distressed wood armoire that was completely out of my price range. The whole day had been consumed with mingling with old people and befriending old lesbians. I was just excited that after two weeks of a new city and new people and a new apartment, I was finally getting some time to myself. I had suddenly become the hybrid of a gay man and a 45 year old divorcee, and I had no idea how I had gotten there.
So today I decided to go back to being a twenty-two year old man; I had every intention of doing so, but as soon as I got up, that all changed. Andrew and I took off at a completely unreasonable hour on a Sunday to go pick up an old plastic Christmas tree; once we got there, we found a blue wing backed chair, a piece of wall art, and a KitchenAid blender. We spent a bit loading it all into the car, but then I felt accomplished all over again, in the way that I imagine only mommies feel accomplished. Then, we returned and they asked me to go play basketball, but all I wanted to do was pour myself a morning drink and read yesterday's Washington Post that someone conveniently throws away everyday without reading. Apparently, we played a game called "21," which I thought involved a deck of cards, a fold out table, and a visor, but then I found myself out on a basketball court running around (which is honestly the furthest thing from the truth). After meandering around the court for a while, I made a legitimate attempt to score, made 2 points, and then sat down. I had accomplished what I set out to do: be involved long enough to feel like I had done something, then quit... kind of like what I do with every sport I've been involved in. Then I spent the rest of our time watching Ben argue with the Mexican children at the court, as Andrew was being called "big boy," by the other child. I wanted to run out on to the court and explain to Andrew that he is perfect the way God made him, and he probably just looks "big boned" to the other kids, but sometimes, you have to let them grow up on their own. Instead, I sat on the bench and talked to a friend from home.
We decided to go to the mall, which concluded with Ben yelling in the car and pressing on my knee to make the car go faster. I almost threatened to pull over and let him walk home, but seriously, what kind of parent does that? If I'm stuck in mommy-mode indefinitely, I will not be the kind of parent that ends up getting visited from DHS. Not at my home; not on my time. Eventually, we came back, and Andrew wanted me to teach him how to iron. After the first shirt, he offered a trade: if I would iron all his shirts for him each week, he would give me a preset amount of cuddle time in return. Yes, cuddling. Even though I'm a pretty huge fan of some recreational cuddling, I barely have the ambition to iron my own shirts during the week, let alone Andrew's. Plus, I don't know what I'll be doing when Andrew needs his shirts ironed. It might be TV time, and it's just a sin to cross housework with syndicated television.
I honestly don't know how my mom did it. I can't cut being a mom, and I hate feeling like I've somehow let myself fall into mommy mentality. I miss being a 22 year old, and I can only hope that maybe this is some weird phase that I'm going through, kind of like how I treated the majority of last week like I was on a reality television show. Andrew and Ben are not children by any means... correction: Andrew and Ben are not children any more than I am. We're all still kind of children, I guess. But if randomly going through a mommy phase is any kind of reflection on how being an actual parent is, I don't know if I want a part in that for a while. Buying things for myself is expensive, let alone things for people that don't have the ability to buy things themselves. Sometimes, like this morning, I don't want to even get out of bed to do things that I've chosen to do myself, so the prospect of waking up to take care of someone else just isn't something that appeals to me right now. All I can hope is that this weird mommy feeling will be over before I know it because there's only so much red wine I can drink out of a Redskins cup; that's the problem you have when two cultures collide.

The Trouble with Balls

Coming from a baseball family, it was hard to imagine that I wouldn't pick up a bat until well into my teens, let alone never really desire to. There were already enough Kirklands for that. When I think back upon my coming of age stories involving sports, there were a lot of tell tale signs that should have warned me to never pick up anything that involved fast-paced focus or quick physical skill. As part of my obsessive compulsive disorder, I like things that have endings, things that are finite. That's why when I get nervous in a conversation, I glance into a corner: three walls that come to a point. There was just never really a place for something as clumsy and round as a ball in my life. Playing sports was like holding one of those slippery cylinder toys people my age played with when they were younger (and you do not know what kind of a struggle it was trying to find a picture of one online). It was just something I was never good at, and honestly, it didn't bother me too much. However, imagine the surprise of my family when I started reading books at an embarrassing rate. What do we do with the child that eats a lot of Chef Boyardee in his spare time while rereading Little Women for the Accelerated Reader points? There was only one solution: recreational league soccer.
And I guess that maybe I wasn't so horrible at it, but in rec league soccer, you learn quickly that if you're the pudge on the team, you get placed at fullback. That's why I jumped on the opportunity to be goalie (or keeper, which I learned is the more professional term), when our regular goaper was struck in the temple by a stray soccer ball. My padded exterior could take the hit, and I knew that it was my time to shine. That was my strategy in sports... play the sideline until someone got maimed or possibly even killed.

This is what sports are to me. An uncontrollable force that ultimately
lead you to throwing something (the water snake) across the room.

And that's exactly why I joined the middle school men's volleyball team as... wait for it... team manager. And sure, I sat most of the time, and my responsibilities constituted me putting up and taking down the net, picking up the balls, and making sure people had their appropriate water bottle. But the day that Jake Baker twisted his ankle was probably the best day of my life. It was the middle of a tournament, and considering that there was practically no funding or interest in middle school male volleyball to begin with, there was no second string. I was the second string. As he was taken off the court, I finally got to join in the huddle. Our coach said something about us playing like p--sies, and while everyone else seemed annoyed and bothered, I was excited. Man talk. How cool is that? I didn't mind being called that because it meant that I was playing, and that's all that mattered until the first shot came to me and hit me in the face. I was removed from the court and replaced by a gimp Jake, who was determined to be more valuable at half-functionality than I was at full.
So, I kind of gave up after that. I just didn't know what to do with all the balls: footballs didn't spiral, basketballs didn't dribble, and I had no idea what kind of secret handshake constituted a successful bump in volleyball. The concepts were apparent to me, but there was something about making them physically happen that was just beyond my imagination. I didn't understand the shortage that was happening between my head and my hands or feet or sometimes my chest, torso, knees, and the occasional wrist hit.

I wish there were more single or double person sports,
like limbo or ballroom dancing.

It wasn't until college that I would try and play any kind of sport again, and that's when I enlisted in intramurals. I was informed that it was "not competitive, and just for fun!" And that was the only exclamation mark I've ever associated with intramurals in a positive light. For the one and probably only time in my life, I represented the Kirkland family in an overly, and kind of intimidatingly, intense version of softball. That's another problem that I've encountered with sports: people get way too involved and blame other people. That's why I like playing tennis for four minutes, or Wii Golf, or ballroom dancing. But all that's beside the point: let's get back to intramural softball. Our team sucked; it didn't take an ESPN commentator to figure that out. We were comprised of the people that weren't good enough to play a college sport in season, so we just kind of gathered together to try and not be horrible. So it was quite a shock to me, at the bottom of the fourth inning when our "team captain" told me that I needed to step it up, or I would be sitting on the bench for the rest of the game. That's when I responded, Or I can just leave now and save everyone the trouble. I don't care, I could be watching TV.
I never cared enough to keep playing or be harshly pep talked into trying harder. I kind of just wanted to drink a half of a flask and stand out on some grass for a while with a leather mitten on my hand, as opposed to the normal routine of drinking half a flask and standing in my room with regular mittens on my hands. After that game, I refused to show up for anymore games or practices, and when people would text me to ask where I was, I would respond, No thanks. I'm going to take a nap instead.
So maybe my unsuccessful sports streaks have to do with most of the maxims that athletes pride themselves on: practice, a positive attitude, actual ambition, hand-eye coordination, and the hope that the other players on your team don't get injured. I never wanted or had any of those qualities. All I wanted to do was listen to my French practice tapes and listen to some Ingrid Michaelson. But I did love the Capri Suns and orange slices; that's actually what probably brought me back to keep trying. And I'm sure one day, I'll find another sport that seems to be calling my name--and after I finish throwing whatever equipment comes with said sport across the field/court/etc, I'll excuse myself for a nice juice box and fruit plate.