I’m into sports. For a while, I was WAY into sports. And when I say into, I mean, devour-everything-about-a-sport-because-I-suck-at-organized-sports-in-real-life. I decided I needed to live and die with my teams. I had to HATE the other team. I decided this in arounds age 14. God I was awkward.
I went to a school in a major city in the US, where our school was pretty good in my senior year, and we played against another school who had a future NBA star on it. I had also played against this star in 8th grade in league play. By high school he was awesome, and our school got up for the game. I decided to go all out and painted my face the school colors.
Little did I know this would be one of the least embarrassing things I did that night.
On this particular night, the future NBA star scored 56 points. In a high school game. This simply did not happen in high school basketball. Teams often TOTALED 56 points. Needless to say, they crushed us. But my interaction, along with the crowd, was the issue.
Like most nights, I went out by myself since I didn’t have too many friends, and the ones I did were into role playing games, chess…anything but sports.
There were a few guys who I didn’t know (I went to a high school with 5,000 kids) who were taunted Mr. NBA. They kept calling him “Peanut.” I thought it was stupid at the time, but Mr. NBA was/is relatively short, and it was a repetitive taunt. I kept trying to “join” them in taunting Mr. NBA. I would say very awkward things, most of which are lost in the fog of my subconscious, but I remember when Mr. NBA was at the free throw line, after he had hit something like 15 out of 16 attempts, “Don’t keep making those free throws, (insert player last name here).” In retrospect, it was not the best taunt I could give. In fact, it was pretty stupid.
What I remember was the faces of the two guys who had been calling Mr. NBA “Peanut.” They looked up at me with a scowl, did a collective “tsk” tongue click, and spent every ounce of telepathic energy they had wishing I would just shut the hell up.
But in the moment, it only made me stronger.
It made me think (incorrectly) that I should redouble my efforts, and eventually I would come up with the perfect taunt that would win my classmates over. I kept trying, and though they initially became even more upset at my antics, my two taunting peers (who were never really my peers) eventually just ignored me, and Mr. NBA dropped 56 on our school. It was his best performance in his high school career, and I was in person to see it four years before he entered the league and became famous.
Feelings: superiority, confidence, awkwardness, confusion (intermixed and all at once)
What I learned:
1) Living your passions is worth the risk. It might result in something hurtful, but it can also result in a once in a lifetime experience.
2) Don’t try and overcome those who don’t accept you by brute force. It simply NEVER works.
3) Getting your value solely from the degree to which you support others does not promote self-reflection.
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