I Wish...

 

One of my grandchildren asked me recently “what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

Huh-uh. Not answering that one. There would be too much implied endorsement for similar behavior out of him. Maybe it’s safer to tell him what I wish I had done.

I wish I had played other sports. I played football from the 3^rd grade on and loved basketball but I didn’t stick with the basketball. I wish I had. I didn’t go out for the track team until I was a high school senior and that was just to do the shot put.

There weren’t a lot of options in my hometown but I didn’t take advantage of all of what we did have.

I played a lot of tennis but I wish we had appealed to the high school to start a tennis team.  We had the makings of a team, despite not having any public courts.  Ronnie McNabb, Teddy Randolph, Tony Woody, Bill Miller…we could have been pretty good.

We didn’t have a public pool either but everybody could swim. I learned in a hotel pool in Kentucky when I was probably 4. Most of us spent a lot of time at the Springbrook pool in Lenoir City and several of us took lifesaving courses there or worked as lifeguards. Different era, I guess.

I wish I had worked harder at football. I was what we called “country strong.” That comes from bales of hay and shoveling grain and working hard. My school had a weight machine and free weights but I never really took advantage of them. I built a bench press out of wood and had a weight set for it but I’m pretty sure all I had was a total of 110 pounds. Not much to be gained from that.

My wife’s uncle, Jack Nichols, was one of the greatest football players to ever come out of my high school. Jack’s work ethic was legendary. He would take off and run to the next city, then turn around and run back. He would challenge anybody to a foot race. Even those that were 80 pounds lighter than him.

I wish I had that kind of drive back then. I did find it later but it would have been cool to have discovered it in when I was young.

I wish I had applied myself better in school. Oh, I did pretty well—straight A’s throughout my school years, but it didn’t take much effort to get A’s.  I did enter the Southeastern Science Fair one time but I was in way over my head. 

I was editor of the school newspaper and did some crazy things in that role. Keep in mind that it was the end of the 60’s and Thoreau’s essay on Civil Disobedience was in my nightstand. I even got arrested (sort of) in college for protesting the damming of the Little Tennessee River. That’s another story.

Our journalism teacher in high school was a kind but naïve lady named Miss Mize. We would write, print, and distribute the school newspaper without letting her see it. That wasn’t real nice of us.

I broke my jaw one time. We had snuck into the pool at night but then we thought the police had arrived. In jumping off the top of the fence to escape, I hit my chin on my knee. Knowing what I know now, I definitely broke my jaw. I haven’t told anybody until today.

I wish I had started a business in high school. I mowed several yards and “hauled hay” for several farmers. Often, those farmers would depend on me to find a crew for them. If I had any business savvy at all, I would have charged a fee and had crews for each task.

I wish I hadn’t been so shy around girls. In junior high, I didn’t really have a girlfriend because I couldn’t talk to them. A steady girlfriend in high school helped with that but it was many years later when I had any confidence at all in talking to girls.

I wish. I wish. Yeah, buddy, I did some crazy stuff and made some mistakes that maybe I wish I hadn’t made, but it’s been a heck of a ride. Still is.