Fun with Balls and Sticks

From the ages of 6-10 I was a dominant soccer player. I played fullback and sweeper and got to take all our goal kicks. My nickname was Big Foot. The teams on which I played were consistently competitive for the league championship, winning one, and I was widely (and rightfully) regarded as the best defensive player on the team, if not in the entire league. When I broke my foot helping a drunk asshole build a deck in fourth grade I stopped playing soccer and started playing basketball. In one game, I scored 16 of my team's 32 points like an 11 year-old albino Charles Barkley. That season our team came in second place in the league and I was voted an All-Star by the coaches of the other teams. I also used to play my neighbor at tennis. He went on to play in college, but I remember owning him when we were eight. Then everybody hit puberty and I was suddenly the blind kid.

It seemed like it happened overnight. Elementary school ended, and with it recess sessions dominating tag football, soccer or three-on-three basketball. I still played in club leagues, but suddenly the kids in these leagues were as strong as me or stronger, and balls were flying at my face way faster than before. I got through the horrors of eighth grade imagining myself becoming a lineman on the football team in high school, but when I went to my doctor to get the mandatory physical, she wouldn't sign the form. She thought my vision was too much of a liability and I'd get myself killed. I remember storming out of her office and sitting in my mother's car, sobbing. It was the first time I can remember feeling what it's like to know I would not get something I really, really wanted. At that point I realized the car was running.  My mom had inadvertently left the keys in the ignition with the car turned on the entire time we were at the doctor. If I wasn't gonna get brain damage from football, I'd inherit it. While I remember being disappointed at the time, in hindsight, which is 20/20 even though I'm legally blind, the doctor was totally right: football would have been way too dangerous. Plus I don't think my high school football team won a single game in the four years I attended, so it was probably better I was left out.

The primary dynamic of most competitive sports involves balls coming at you, so I thought maybe I could play a sport without a ball, like wrestling. But even that involved balls coming at me, so I considered a sport where at least the ball stood still. My grandfather took me golfing when I was six. We were near the green and I had a wedge. He asked me to put the ball as close to the hole as I could. I chipped within an inch and Pop told me to grab my putter and put it in the hole. I looked at him, furious, and said, “If you wanted the ball in the hole, why didn't you just ask me to do that the first time?” When I was eight we went to the Greenbriar resort for a family vacation and I stepped out onto the driving range and bombed a 3 wood dead straight, 180 yards consistently. Or, at least that's what people told me. While the ball isn't coming at you in golf, it really helps if you can see where it goes. Unless I'm in close pitching, as soon as the ball leaves the face of the club, I lose sight of it completely. Still, golf was a sport much safer than soccer, basketball or football. Or so I thought.

I was 15 and at an age when my dad and I were struggling to connect. He had recently started a landscape maintenance company and was on his way to becoming an extremely successful businessman. I was really into punk rock and the fact I smoked cigarettes and nobody in my family knew. We went out to play a round of 18, the first full round in my life. I don't know who was supposed to remember to remind me to put on sunscreen, but it didn't happen. For five hours we played in the scorching Virginia August heat. If I remember right, I shot pretty well. But that didn't matter. When I got home and looked in the mirror, I realized something was very, very wrong because my face was redder than the surface of Mars. When I woke up, I had second degree sunburns on my arms, neck and ears. With these blisters oozing and aching, I went to a dermatologist who prescribed this stuff called Silvadane. I smeared the white paste onto the burns and it turned purple-black as it soothed the damaged skin. It smelled terrible, rotten but also metallic. It seemed to help, though. My mom said she wanted to bring my dad up on child abuse charges; instead, she just reminded me of this sunburn every single time I saw my dad for the next two years.

After that, my interest in playing sports became largely passive. (Admittedly, the secret smoking may have played a role in this). I'd play basketball with my friends, I played IM soccer in college and I played par 3 golf when I lived in LA, but I'm much less engaged in athletics today. Instead, I got really into playing music. Sophomore year of high school I started playing the drums, which ended up being perfect, since drums are the most athletic instrument around. The movements were most like basketball, the way I had to use all four limbs and stay in sync with the other players; but it also took hand strength like a big league pitcher, toughness like a hockey player and the ferocity of an outside linebacker to practice and become a solid drummer. Senior year of high school, I played in the school Jazz ensemble and received a varsity letter for achievement in band. We even won second place in a band competition. Granted, we won second place in a contest involving three total bands, but that's still more than the football team ever won. Playing the drums, I got to be sweaty and coordinated and strong and I almost never had to worry about sunburn or balls flying at my face. (Almost never).