Wednesday, January 18, 2017

We Can't All be Billy

I was asked to give an inspirational speech to the Middle School, on a topic of my choosing, as part of a series of faculty speeches called "Laker Talks." I had never really attempted to write this kind of speech before. I have a hard time thinking of myself as a motivational speaker, and initially, I struggled to get going. Adding to the challenge was the timing of this speech: I committed to speaking way back in August, when I was not yet a father. At that time, I probably underestimated the prospective difficulties of trying to write a coherent speech between baby feedings.

I ended up having some fun with it though - both writing my speech and delivering it - and I actually found it a little cathartic to let go of some of the failures and regrets from my athletic career. I've embellished or invented a few details to make my points. And I purposely de-emphasized a few of my successes as a high school wrestler. If any of these changes better enabled a middle school student to relate to my story, then the ends justify the means.

Everyone knows that the most obvious way to divide a group of kids into two teams is to assign two captains and to allow them to take turns picking players until every kid has been chosen. Anyone who has ever participated in any type of informal sporting competition between the ages of roughly six and fourteen knows this method, as does every teacher, coach and camp counselor. This might be the easiest way to pick teams, but to the last kid picked, it can be unbelievably cruel. When I was nine years old, in the summer of 1991, my camp counselors used this system every time they had to assemble two teams. Sometimes, they used it multiple times per day. And every single time, I was one of the last to be chosen. It made me feel completely worthless.

The only way of sparing myself the embarrassment of being picked last was to be chosen as captain myself – and this happened once in a while. But of course, it couldn’t happen every time. And by August, I had been chosen last, or close to last, in just about every competitive activity: soccer, volleyball, flag football, capture the flag, even a competitive Connect Four tournament.

When I was nine years old, my friends and I felt that athletic ability was the most important way to measure a boy’s value as a person. I’m sure a lot of boys still think this way. To the boys in my age group, nothing really mattered except for speed, strength and the ability to put a ball in a basket or in the back of a net. So for a long time, I believed that it didn’t matter if I was funny, or artistic, or a really nice guy, or if during the school year, I was in the advanced reading group. I believed that none of these things were important, or worthy of respect, and certainly none of them would get me picked any sooner for athletic competitions.

I remember that during kickball one morning, my frustration and embarrassment reached its peak. There was this kid Billy, who was pretty much my opposite. He was strong and fast and coordinated, which meant that he was also unbelievably cool. He was always picked first. In kickball games, he always batted first. And I remember he led off this game by kicking a ball over the head of the deepest outfielder, and racing around the bases before it could even be returned to the infield. An inside the park home run. On this day, I had the unfortunate job of hitting behind him in the batting order. As he crossed the plate, I held up my hand for a high five – to prove to everyone else that I was cool by my association with Billy. Without even looking at me, he held up his hand to meet mine, and our fingertips barely grazed. My heart was already pounding. I knew I’d never be able to follow up what he had just done.
The bane of my existence during the summer of 1991.
Sure enough, I “swung” at the first offering, and the red rubber ball dribbled off the side of my sneaker and down the third base line. I was thrown out easily – or at least, I assume I was thrown out easily. I didn’t actually wait around to see. Instead of running down to first base, I made a beeline in the other direction, past my team mates and counselors, past the metal bleachers, and behind a tree where I burst into tears. My weak kick was embarrassing enough. Crying in front of everyone was twice as bad. But I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t fair. I was a good kid: I didn’t talk back to my parents, I kept my room relatively clean, I didn’t repeat those dirty jokes that the other boys sometimes tossed around. And what did I have to show for it? I wasn’t any good at sports, so what did any of the other stuff matter?

My counselor Dave followed me to my tree. He was a good athlete himself, so I wasn’t sure if he could relate to the deep shame and despair that I was feeling at that moment. But he didn’t make me explain why I had run off or why I was crying. He already knew. Instead, he knelt down to my level, put a hand on my shoulder and told me firmly but not unkindly, “We can’t all be Billy.”
I don’t think I fully understood until much later how important those words were to me. “We can’t all be Billy.” In other words, we can’t all be natural athletes. Just like we can’t all be tall. And we can’t all play the clarinet. And we can’t all solve a Rubix Cube.

When I was nine years old, and ten, and eleven, and twelve and all the way up through high school, I lived under this mistaken assumption that because I was a mediocre athlete, I was also a mediocre person. And so instead of feeling proud about the things I was good at – like being a good writer, and a good musician, and having a good sense of humor – I spent lots of time feeling sorry for myself.

I did have at least a little success in one sport: wrestling. I started when I was in third grade and continued all the way up through my senior year of high school. Truthfully, my career was full of ups and downs. I probably lost my first fifteen or twenty matches in a row, like a lot of wrestlers do, and I almost ended up quitting. But by my second and third year, I had started to win a few matches and even one tournament. When I got to high school, though, it was a whole new ball game. I had trouble even cracking the school’s varsity lineup, much less winning matches when I actually got opportunities. I earned a varsity spot my junior year, but lost it halfway through the season. Obviously, that was the kind of setback that would frustrate any athlete, but for me it went deeper. Losing my varsity spot meant that I was a Failure with a capital F. That same quarter, I made my school’s honor roll for the first time. It should have been a proud accomplishment, but it barely mattered to me, because I had been demoted from varsity. Kids in high school got respect for Varsity Letter jackets, not for grades.
On every remotely cold day between September 1998 and March 2000, I proudly wore my varsity jacket. And I would have continued to wear it in college, if it had been socially acceptable.

I was named the captain of the wrestling team my senior year, and I won a bunch of matches, most of which I remember well. But what I remember best is my dad telling me after a handful of victories that my high school athletic career had officially surpassed his. I also remember the losses much more vividly than the victories. I was up 4 to 2 in the second period of a match in the county tournament, when, while trying to return my opponent to the mat, I tripped over my own feet and brought him down on top of me. He pinned me, or rather I pinned myself. Rather than just feeling the simple frustration that comes from defeat, I felt total humiliation. No joke: at seventeen years old, I felt that I was and would never be a man.
My high school athletic career has been over for seventeen years now, and the truth is that I sometimes wish I had been born a better athlete. I daydream sometimes about what it would have been like to have my hand raised at the 2000 New Jersey State Wrestling tournament. And I imagine myself back at camp, kicking a ball that no one can catch, rounding the bases and then connecting with Billy for a solid high-five.

You’ll never hear me say that sports don’t matter. I get the passionate feelings that come from playing, and coaching and just following a team. Some of my greatest heroes in the world are Red Sox and Patriots players. And the performance of my teams can be enough to change my mood for weeks at a time.

But in the seventeen years that I’ve been out of high school, I’ve learned just how little my athletic accomplishments or lack of accomplishments truly matter. These days I aspire to be a good teacher to my students, a good son to my parents, a good brother to my sister, a good husband to my wife – and as of one month ago, a good father to my children. My ability to perform these roles has nothing to with that match I lost at the Morris County tournament in my senior year, which no one even remembers except for me.

Many of you are already athletes. Many of you will continue to play sports when you high school. Some of you will play in college. And some of you are already finished with organized sports. If you are an athlete, then by all means, I hope you try your hardest, and enjoy yourself. But whether you are the star of a varsity team, or a J.V. benchwarmer, don’t ever make the mistake of thinking – as I used to think – that your value to a sports team is the same thing as your value as a human being.

Cherish the skills you do have. Some of you are better at math than I will ever be. Some of you are future debate team members. Some of you are just known for being really good and honest friends. Don’t you ever think that athletic skills are automatically more valuable than any of the skills I just listed.

I just mentioned that one of my goals these days is to be a good father to my children. Just over a month ago, my wife and I welcomed twin babies into the world: a boy and a girl. Taking care of them has been so much fun, but also so challenging. There have already been nights where, at around two AM, both of them just start screaming at the top of their lungs. They need me to feed them and to rock them and to take care of them. And when I come into their room to pick them up, you can bet that they don’t care how well I once kicked a ball or swung a racket. They don’t care that I got pinned at the county tournament my senior year. They don’t care that I was never as good an athlete as Billy.

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