I was a jock.
I spent a lot of time in locker rooms, on buses, and in the company of teammates and coaches. Had I been more talented or more coachable, I might have spent more years running, jumping, and chasing balls of various shapes and sizes across courts and fields. I was nothing special, but it's still a big part of my identity. I have a limp, an oft-broken nose, and a certain physical (over)confidence that can sometimes get me into trouble.
I know I shouldn't romanticize my time as an athlete. It taught me lessons, but those lessons might have been better learned in other ways, through other endeavors. We all go through stuff, and most of us eventually find the limits of our abilities and the fissures in our character; sports is simply one way to learn hard truths about ourselves.
My teammates and myself were not, for the most part, Boy Scouts. (Most of those who were literal Boy Scouts were as rude and rowdy as the rest of us.) We were young men primed with testosterone who had heard rumors of a sexual revolution; we did not always behave as gentlemen. We were frustrated and immature and not above crude remarks and insensitive behaviors. I'm sure some of us were bullies.
But we weren't criminals or monsters. We were just boys trying to figure out what it meant to be men, armed with little more than bravado and lousy role models. We thought we knew all about love and sex, though in reality we understood little. For many of us, our relationships with women were defined by awe and fear. Women were more competent and reasonable than us, and their attention felt miraculous. Even as a teenager, I marveled that they'd ever take us into their beds, much less into their lives.
We didn't live in Mayberry.........