Despite my small size, I played football my first three years of high school. It was a great experience, especially during my freshman year, when we won the state championship despite being double-digit underdogs. However, my football career ended abruptly my junior year, when I hurt someone for the first time.
I was always a poor tackler. In hindsight, I think the coaches only played me on defense because I was fast and could intercept passes. When I did tackle someone, I usually did it by dragging them down. Never, in my entire football career, did a coach praise me for a "good hit."
I hated tackling because I hated to hurt people, and I avoided injuring anyone until my junior year. Then, one practice during a tackling drill, one of my friends ran the ball straight at me. I made contact and wrapped him up, but he would not go down easy, so I drove my feet to knock him backward. Suddenly, he said, "My ankle, my ankle!" I knew something was wrong. The coaches helped him off the field and then restarted the drill. When my turn came up again, I was so worried about my friend that I made only a halfhearted attempt to tackle my new partner, and he got past me.
The coach forced me to go again, and, once again, he whizzed by me. "Come on, Andrew," my coach yelled, adding an expletive. This angered me, and my blood boils even today when I think about it. I had just injured someone, possibly seriously, and he was yelling at me for not expending enough effort to hurt someone else.
The next day, I learned that my friend had two bones broken in his ankle, and I watched him walk on crutches for the next six months.” Sorry I hadn’t noticed that before. Other than that, it’s just fine. Thanks for publishing them.
That was the beginning of the end of my football career. I finished that season because I did not want to be a "quitter," but my heart was no longer in the game, and I did not play my senior year. I had seriously hurt someone, and I could not think of a way to justify it. I tried to justify it by telling myself that I only did what the coaches told me to, but that did not absolve me. Even though I hurt my friend on the coach's orders, I was still responsible for the injury.
Camilo Mejia, a Florida National Guard soldier, refused to return to Iraq from a two-week leave, claiming conscientious objector status. As for his sincerity, Lew Rockwell said it best when he wrote that "not a living soul doubts his sincerity." Yet a military court sentenced him to one year in prison for desertion.
Camilo's experience resembles mine. He took part in war, where blowhard politicians like George W. Bush force others to hurt each other, and decided that he could no longer participate. Like him, I found myself unable to participate in a system in which blowhards (coaches in my case) order younger people to hurt each other.
I doubt that anyone would blame me for refusing to participate after an obnoxious blowhard forced me to try to hurt others. Camilo refused to participate in war because he realized that war forces young men to hurt each other simply because others tell them they should. I cannot blame him. Can you?
November 3, 2004
