Sports.

While I'm at it, I should tell a little story. I was never an athlete in elementary or junior high school. I was a bit chubby and I got picked on a lot (my dad was the art teacher at a private school, which meant I got to go for free, but I was a faculty kid and our car was rusty, so I got harassed a lot).

But in the summer before 8th grade, out of the blue, I told my parents that I was going to go out for sports. My dad drove me out to the football field were all my peers were doing jumping jacks. I ran up and got in formation towards the back. Everyone kept turning around and staring at me...they were surprised to see me there. The few friends I hung out with at school were the geeky types who played Apple IIe games, read comics, drew in our sketchbooks and read Tolkien. They didn't know what to make of me being on the football team. It was like signing up with the enemy.

I was on the B football team and I got a lot of bench time. Sometimes I would get tossed in at the end of a game when it was clear that the score wouldn't change. At other times I played for the whole game with a B team from another school. The last game of the season, I remember playing on the defensive line. During that game I recovered a fumble and another time sacked the quarterback for a turnover. I'd played football with my friends in the neighborhood before, but that sack and fumble in a real game with full gear was an experience I'll never forget.

In the winter I took it up a notch and went out for wrestling. Wrestling is one of my favorite sports. The conditioning involved is intense. In 8th grade I was driven into the one of the peak in-shape periods of my life. You're part of an overall team in wrestling, but when you're on the mat, it's just you and your opponent. Strength and endurance are important, but being familiar with a variety of holds and escapes is crucial. That 80s movie "Vision Quest" actually gets a lot of it right. I never won a match against another school, but I got better and better as the season went on. Sometimes we went up against one of the inner city schools. Those wrestlers had a vicious attitude and were intimidating for all the reasons you might think a white Jewish kid going to a private school might have. But by the end of the season I wasn't intimidated by anyone. And if I lost, it wasn't because I was pinned, but because the match ended and I was down a point or two. When I shook hands with my opponent, there was mutual respect: I'd lost, but they hadn't gotten the win they wanted. It was a good game. Wrestling changed my life, my sense of who I was and what I was capable of.

I earned the respect of my peers that year. Most of my peers I still didn't like. As adults, I've met some of them and they are really nice people, but as kids they were rich, snobby, cruel jerks. Through 8th grade and 9th grade, because of the time I spent doing sports, I didn't get messed with as much. But for 10th grade I told my parents I was going to go to public high school. I'd earned the respect of my class on my own terms and now I felt I could leave that school on my own terms and not "run away."

In public high school I went out for wrestling again but it was too intense...practice started at 6am, which means I had to leave the house at 5 to get there. The afternoon practices kept me from performing in the madrigals choir, which just wasn't going to happen. So that was the end of my sports career.

My brother, on the other hand, was a jock from the time he was a toddler. Sports has always been a major part of his life. He's 6' 3" with my dad's build. He's back in Cleveland now and softball games with his old friends are a big part of his recreation when he's not working. He is a mean fucking pitcher.