When I was in Little Leopards... for those of you who don't know what that is (you're blessed), that was the name of the pee wee or Pop Warner football league I played in between grades 5-8... I was about the same height as I am now and probably twice as strong and fast. I hit puberty at about 3 and hit it like a freight train. I was a man among boys and I. was. awesome... but enough glory days talk. In 5th and 6th grade pops helped coach the team. He had coached JV and HS ball when he was younger and scouted at different times in his life so he knew his shit. He was tough too. Before practice, we talked football. After practice, we talked football. While I was dreaming, there we were talking football. And I get it too. Who knew that my growth spurt would end abruptly at age 13. I could have kept growing and became a college player or maybe even a pro! That was kinda the Little Leopard dream especially if you were a 2nd or even 3rd generation to play. You had generations of failed pro sports dreams pushing you to be the best you could be.
Now don't mistake this for the "My daddy's the coach so I get play short stop" bullshit. I'd got way more "do better's" than I got "Atta boy's". I had to fight for every sliver of attention during practice... I was a selfish kid looking for daddy attention, so what. Instead of bathing me in glorious praise like I wanted, he worked hard with the kids who needed it most like any good coach does. He was instantly there for the kids who had to walk 45 mins to practice. He slapped those runts on the back who hadn't and would probably never hit a growth spurt to take them over 5' 2". He was there to brush the dirt clumps off of the kids who had to wear a XL t-shirt with mustard and bong water stains as a jersey.
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Now if you were to ask my dad, he'd tell you that you have to help yourself and go after your dreams and rah rah but in all of his stories I didn't really remember hearing about someone picking him up by his bootstraps when he was at his lowest and cheering him forward. Maybe the Air Force? I never really had thought that this was a learned thing except he was a teacher but I really didn't have much insight into that part of his life. My 12 year old mind didn't have the tools to see what was going on. All I knew was that I had to keep trying harder and harder to get some attention. I had no idea though that at the time my father was falling victim to one of the famous Vozar personality quirks. We fucking love an underdog! We love being one of the few on the front lines when the victory trumpets go off and our weak and feeble band of losers stand victorious over the seasoned veteran juggernauts fair and square. It can be in anything too. Sports, chess, cards, life, it doesn't matter what. We want to say that we helped you make the decision to take the road less traveled and cheered you on until you figured out that by doing so, it made all the difference. Then we'll high five you!
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Now if you know me, I instantly hate what everybody else likes. I don't just jump on fads because they're popular. I like to do my research and if I do end up liking something, I kinda sneak up on the band wagon and just before it gets to top speed I JUMP on it and join in with everyone. Now it's not universal with everything in my life but I have made a conscious effort to play devil's advocate with pop culture. I saw my roommates do it in college and it almost added this whole other dimension to their personality... and in college my personality was .135-D. Not even 1-D let alone 3-D. My nickname was "Silent Sam" and I had nothing going for me. I liked everything everyone else liked so there was no real reason to have an honest to God discussion with anyone because everyone thought the same. It was the small town mentality and was as bland as the unflavored Almond milk Gina brought over this week. Like drinking purified air.
My saving grace was that I was funny but unfortunately for me I lived with some ruthlessly funny bastards. I was a knock knock joke and they were Sam Kinison. They could take what you liked the most and make you second guess that and your whole entire life in just a night. A lot of times they liked the same thing they were ripping on but it was for the entertainment of the group... minus the few that were in their cross-hairs. It was like a great fighter punching himself out of a corner and knocking 3 guys out. Oh and God forbid you fight back. That only got you in deeper. It was really quite a thing to watch. Just ruthless... but the next day we knew it was all in good fun. We brushed off our shoulders, kept drinking, and watched wrestling. No hard feelings.
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Now that's not the origin story of that personality trait but it is where I honed my craft and saw it as something that I could add to my empty bag of mental weapons. When you play that way though, you have to have things in your life that you like that are off radar. You do not want them to become ammunition. No one can know anything about it and if they do, they need to know very little while you know a lot. You'll need to have that tiny upper hand if shit got to that point. It was fun going back and forth like that but in order to be good, I had to take a look at my life and shed some dead weight. No worries, if you knew me then and know me now, I'm basically the same. I really didn't have to jettison anything too important.
All of this gets me to where I'm at right now. Cleveland is the underdog city and that's my kind of town. It's the punchline of joke after joke. Hell we've heard them all and baby... they're all old and worn out. It doesn't even hurt to have them directed towards you as much as is hurts to hear jokes as lame as a chicken crossing the road over and over again. Even the nice things people say about the city are just hidden insults that you may not even notice. "This city has grit"... Thanks rich people for the scraps of a compliment. Unless you're helping us out please, shut up and continue enjoying being rich. Move into city limits and pay taxes... then you can say anything you want. This city is like any other city out there. It has a past, a present, and a future and even though we may not be proud of where we've been, we need to stand up and take notice of where we're going. Unfortunately there aren't more people out there that treat cities like my dad treated pee wee football players. He didn't get paid, he was a relentless cheerleader, and the more you needed him there... the more he was there. We're not the rich kids who came from a successful family and had every perk growing up but we were great once... and we can be again. We just have to continue to fight 3 guys out of this corner.
If you liked this, check out my other equally entertaining reasons by clicking on the links below:
If you liked this, check out my other equally entertaining reasons by clicking on the links below:
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