December 1-
Things you should throw away but can’t.
I’ve kept my old high school lacrosse tank tops, my old
lacrosse pads, and even an old football jersey. Keeping the football jersey is especially ridiculous because
I didn’t even like playing football.
I may have even hated it!
So to hold on to a memento from those times seems dumb, but it still
sits in that one small duffel bag with the rest of my old sports junk. The football jersey still smells like
teenage body odor that 100 washes couldn’t ever rid, but ironically I think the
only reason I keep it is the fantasy that one day a wife or girlfriend goes through
my junk and decides that she likes wearing it around the house! Ha! That thing is a smelly, stained, ripped old rag, and I really
don’t even believe I’ll find a partner that long-term-enough to be digging
through my old stored bags in the basement in the first place, but there’s a
part of me that is tickled by the potential scenario. We weren’t even that good of a football team, but it was as
close as I’ve even gotten to war.
Football was scary, especially for a scrawny guy like me. To go out there against guys that were
nearly 100lbs heavier, some of them on steroids even in high school, required a
tremendous amount of courage.
Hitting someone so hard that they had to leave the game was at times
more of the point than to score the most touchdowns. I think my girlfriend/wife fantasy is fueled by the hope
that someone is able to recognize the warrior in a younger version of myself; that
she would appreciate the guts that it takes to put on that armor and walk onto the
field, and enjoy representing me in that way.
I’ve
kept all the old lacrosse jerseys and pads for different reasons; that I
believe I may actually play again some day.
About 5 years after college, I joined an adult lacrosse league in
Charlestown. Though I was in
decent shape and on the younger end of the demographic of guys in the league, I
was one of the worst out there. In
high school, I was a decent player on a fantastic team. In this older men’s league, I was
terrible! Before this league, I
hadn’t played in over 10 years, and it felt like most of these guys had
played in college and then continued in these leagues afterwards, running circles
around me. Here I am 10 years
after that men’s league, and I still move my small duffel bag full of jerseys
and pads from apartment to apartment, convincing myself that there’s still a
chance I may join another old man’s league one day. As opposed to football, I actually loved playing lacrosse in
high school. Not only were we a
great team, but I don’t remember it being that difficult. We had fun. I was hanging out with a bunch of my friends. Although the rational part of my brain
knows that I’ll probably never play again, I still am able to look at those
pads and reminisce on some enjoyable memories. They smell just as bad as the football pads (they’ve been
sharing the same bag for nearly 20 years), but are received in a drastically
different way.
I’m
afraid to throw away these jerseys and pads because they represent a past that
I don’t want to forget, and an unlikely future that I don’t want to give up
hope on.
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