November 20th, 2007

I Wasn’t Ready

A couple of weeks ago the Career Class met for a Bible study and the “introduce yourself” thing this time was “tell something about yourself” and the rest of the class would guess whether or not it was true. Most everybody said something that was true and the few who said something false were guessed as false right away. When it got to me, my statement was, “I lettered in four sports in high school.” Everybody thought that was pretty funny, and when I listed them (football, basketball, wrestling, and baseball), they came to the (correct) conclusion fairly quickly that I went to a small high school. I even mentioned this a long time ago, and those who remember that will also remember that the letter in basketball was for keeping stats.

While I didn’t end up playing all four years of football in high school, I do have some fond memories of it. When I made the switch to tight end my Junior year, I felt a lot better about things – catching the ball made more sense to me than blocking people, and I never had the size back then to block well anyway. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we got a new quarterback my Junior year and ended up having primarily a running game that year, but I did catch 100% of the passes that were thrown my way (a grand total of ONE).

So when it was announced in the Career Class a couple of weeks ago that we’d been challenged to a flag football match by the Young Marrieds class, it sounded fun to me. I wasn’t getting all Uncle Rico or anything, but I thought it might be fun.

The game was this past Saturday and our class won by default – they had two guys show up. Since we were all there, though, we went ahead and split up into two teams and played. Luckily for me, my team had one more guy on it, which gave me the opportunity to sit out every other series… which quickly turned into sitting out more plays until someone needed a break… which turned into me sitting out all the plays and just keeping track of the line of scrimmage.

I knew I was out of shape, but, man. My lungs were hurting, I got dizzy, and toward the end of it, my legs weren’t cooperating. Sheesh. This is why everyone laughed when I said I played sports in high school, by the way – this is the exact reason. I had remembered the catching passes part, but had forgotten the running up and down the field part.

So yesterday I was pretty sore. Plus I’ve been kind of low-level sick for a while, and coughing was really painful. My legs and my back hurt so much that it was painful to step on the accelerator in my car. Today my back felt a bit better, but my legs were worse. The media specialist at work asked me what was wrong because I was walking funny.

So I’m hopeful I won’t be as sore tomorrow, but time will tell. I’m older and out of shape, and I guess there’s something I can do about one of those things.

And that is: never play football again.

6 Comments on “I Wasn’t Ready”

  1. Theo B. Scure says:

    SWEET! Come play with us over Christmas in WI.

    Might want to run a few whistle drills first, though. :)

  2. Lorelei says:

    Welcome to (older) age!

    **snicker**snicker**

  3. Brian Arnold says:

    Looks like we both need to do some getting into shape. Maybe we can find a way to encourage each other through it!

    I know! We'll do Rock Band drum-offs. I hear that really works a guy out. :D

  4. brent-ley says:

    Rock Band drum-off? I'm in.

  5. Greg says:

    Heh, I have to retire my jersey after Saturday's injuries as well. Fortunately, I caught 100% of passes thrown my way too, I guess I went out on top!

  6. Smoothie King says:

    Guys, Don't "throw the baby out with the bath water" I like Brian's idea…fight back and get into shape…Not 17 year old boy shape…but in shape for yor age. I need to do the same so call me when you go to the gym.

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