I have no photos of that ten-year-old “fat kid”, struggling to please my athlete father by not complaining when I found myself playing little league football with kids two and four years older than me.
The above photo of me in the hockey gear (do I look fat to you?) is from at least a year later, perhaps two. I was a lousy hockey player too, but at least I got to play for a few minutes once…
Once.
That was once more then I ever played in little league football though. I never played a single play that entire summer. Even during practice. The coach was far from new, modern or forward thinking. He seemed annoyed that I was there at all, I sucked so bad. I was only useful as a tackling dummy for the older boys. Because I was “fat”.
When Dad had signed me up, I’m not sure he realized that (in those days) little league football assigned kids to teams based on weight rather than age. My weight put me on a team with kids all between twelve and fourteen years old. I was also uncoordinated and found it difficult to focus. The coaches and other “jocks” saw right away that I’d be a liability on any team. They wanted to win games.
I have no doubt that if my father had been coaching all the sports I sucked at playing, he would have found a way to get me to like playing them. Then maybe I would have enjoyed it. But I hated it. I sucked at it, and everything just reminded me that I was fat.
Fat and stupid. Bruce also made sure I knew how stupid I was too, and somehow…
Somehow a kid from school also started calling me a pig.
As I said in yesterday’s post, I have no memory of exactly when Bruce started it but since I have this clear memory of Shawn Freis taunting me with the “Brian is a pig, Brian is a pig, na na na na!” stuff… and that was around the time of little league football, it had to have been going on before then so…
So I guess it started before I was ten years old. But when Shawn called me a pig one day, my clear memory of that also remembers me completely losing my shit and going after him. That was a first. Of course Shawn was fast and I was not, so there was no way I could catch him and that just made it worse. Reminded me again how fat and slow I was. And how stupid I was to think I could catch him. I ended up having to stop when I ran out of breath. Panting, I was so pathetic as I screamed and cried as Shawn danced and laughed just out of my reach… “Brian is a pig, Brian is a pig, Brian is a pig… ” I remember even throwing my shoes at him. I missed. “Brian is a pig, Brian is a pig, Brian is a pig… ” Only succeeding in reminding me that I was…
Fat and stupid.
Pig, pig, pig, pig…
Unfortunately, this too will have to be…
To be continued…
