This post will be odd for me. It's a little bit of a view of the man behind the curtain. Which is a rule I really don't like to break. At least not for the masses.
My self image is pretty pathetic. When I was a freshman in high school I tried out for the wrestling team. I'd taken part in football practice and played on the practice squad of my high school football team. I'd outperformed a lot of the guys on this team. But I was too small. Not just in the eyes of the coaches and players who snickered at me behind my back, and in many instances in front of my face.
But I was also considered too frail and small, by a single mother, who wanted nothing more than to keep her eldest son safe. "Run track again", she counseled. "What about the soccer team?", she asked. Never mind that my passion since the age of 2, when I simulated snapping a football in front of the television, had always been football. I was too small. So in order to play the sport I loved I had to be on the practice squad.
I digress.
I'd started by saying that when I was a freshman I tried out for the wrestling team. I was 5' 8", and weighed somewhere around 70 - 75 pounds. I participated in the 78lb Weight Class. I was a skinny, lanky, awkward boy. More limb than torso. But, I was tenaceous and even though it was only my innaugaral year, I advanced all the way to State Regionals.
Despite the fact that I was now good at two sports I was still viewed as "too small" by everyone around me.
This is the Self Image I've carried with myself for the entirety of my life. The frail, lanky, awkward black kid, at a mostly white school. The kid that had to be funny as a defense mechanism. The kid that always had a quick wit, and was even fleeter of foot if his wit ever got beyond him. The kid that couldn't get a date because...well...who wants to go out with a kid that looks like a reject from a casting of We Are The World extras. No one wanted to be me and girls avoided me.
I found myself to be the butt of plenty of jokes, most of which I didn't notice at the time but are clear to me now. If I were in a John Hughes movie I'd be cast as a Misfit at best. I'm not complaining mind you, but I am very aware of how it affected the person I am today. And I want better for the kids of today. Not for any altruistic reasons. Not because I have a 15 year old daughter. Although these reasons are both solid.
I want this, mostly, because no one should have to endure bullying of any sort. No one should be told they aren't good enough to go after their dreams.
I'm not complaining about where I ended up in life. Heck. I'd be the first to admit that it's made me the person I am today, and I kind of like that guy.
But I hate what it took to get here. It was ugly. It was brutal. It was emasculating. It was mean and unfair and lonely.
But mostly...
It was sad. And as I look back on the last 42 years, I know that at times my greatest achievement was surviving the voices. Not just the dissenting ones that came from society. Heaven knows they were loud and obnoxious. But they were dwarfed by the ones that played in my own head.
I don't know why I'm writing any of this. Or even why I write anything for that matter. I suppose it has a therapeutic value. It makes me feel "less small" in the grand scheme of things.
About a decade ago, my wife, aka "The Admiral" managed to convince me that I'm not too small. That I'm beautiful in my own awkward, geeky, kinky, fan boy way. So for the bullied and the beautiful I offer this.
I hope it brings as much comfort and inspiration to you as it does to me.
