Ego

The idea that I might fall as I climbed along the gable roof of my Grandmother’s house never occurred to me. I was famous in my family for my daredevil stunts and this was just another one of them. I was considered quite the athlete and gymnast in our little town. I was proud of my reputation so every once in a while I would reinforce it by some public demonstration, like this one. I had yet to get hurt doing anything, well there had been a few bruises or cuts, but there had never been any broken bones or anything like that.

Everyone was below me as I climbed around like a monkey, screaming for me to get down before I killed myself, or gave them a heart attack. Finally I leaped into the branches of a tree by the side of the house, and shimmied down, ending my stunt just as I had started it.

“You’re supposed to go to your university’s summer practice tomorrow and you’re doing things that could kill you?” my father demanded as soon as my feet touched the ground. He was as proud as I was that I had been accepted on a football scholarship and I could see why he would get worried about me jeopardizing that because of a dumb stunt. On the other hand there was no way that I would get hurt and he should have known that, I was a genius athlete, not the sort of person that would fall off of a roof.

The university I had signed up to attend was in a large city, which made me a little nervous, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I had never actually been to a real city, not a large one. Now I was going to be living in one. My family never traveled much because we didn’t have a lot of cash. I was going to be the first of my family to ever go to college even. I was the family pride a joy, the pride of the whole town for my sports ability. There wasn’t a single person in town that hadn’t heard that I was going to be joining the big city football team, they even held a party for me.

When I got to the city however, in spite of all of my confidence when I had left home, I found that I was scared out of my mind just getting out of my parent’s car. Never in my life had I been next to a skyscraper before, or seen so many people moving around without recognizing any of them. I got checked into my room in the dorms, they were mostly empty of course, only the summer school students and the sports students were in them. And then my parents left me, and I was all alone.

I fell asleep that night, on my unfamiliar dorm mattress and I remember dreaming about stands cheering my name, just like they did back when I was in high school. Only in my dreams the stands were much larger then they were when I was back home, and filled with strangers who knew my name even though we had never met. I dreamed of fame.

Of course dreaming of fame and achieving it are two different things. I am a receiver and in my mind I was a pretty good one but my coach disagreed to my shock. He told me that not only was my catching accuracy not to his standards; I also didn’t run fast enough. He put me through hell, me, who had been heralded as the savior of my football team all through high school. It was said that it was thanks to me alone that we had managed to go to state, even if in the end we hadn’t won. My school had never once gone to state before I had enrolled in it. And every day I had the coach calling me trash and shouting at me that I would never be allowed to play while he was coach. I saw the other players they had as receivers, I had to admit that they were better then me, even though it was painful to do so.

To be continued...