The Footballer

The Footballer
I have long since found my place in the world. It isn't what I thought it might be, but I am at peace most of the time so there is much to be grateful for.

As a boy growing up in Ireland, I was not without abilities. 'There is no heavier burden than a great potential' chided the card that my brother got me for my 18th Birthday. Perhaps he could already see the car-crash that my life was destined to become.

Just a few years earlier, success seemed almost inevitable. I expressed my talents effortlessly.

In the subsequent years however, I was to learn the very painful lesson that success and fulfilment are much more about attitude than ability and sadly my attitude tended to be somewhere between shocking and catastrophic.

On one occasion, I was playing football for my class team at the local grammar school. I would have been no more than 14 years old. Football was my passion. A football match was an unparalleled opportunity for me to really express myself – I came alive as nowhere else on a football pitch.

If you had asked me at the time, I would have told you that I was the best player on the pitch by a country mile. Other people might have said the same but something was not quite right.

We were hammering the opposition and it was one of those days when I felt that I could score at will and in whatever manner I could imagine. Sure enough this was the pattern of the game and I lost count of the number of times I scored. It was just all too easy.

It is said that geniuses have a different way of seeing the world – so do assholes.

I got the brilliant idea that for the rest of the game I was going to score against both teams alternately – just to even things up a bit or, more accurately, just to feed an ego which knew no bounds.

Needless to say, I was the only one who found it funny.

Eventually the referee blew his whistle and summoned me over to have a word. He was a teacher in the school who probably had better ways of spending his time than refereeing a school football match. I could tell that he wasn't too impressed with my attitude.

“I have never met a more obnoxious person” he said angrily as he gave me my marching orders. “Sir, maybe you need to get out more” I thought, but knew better than to actually say it.

With the passing of youth, life duly chewed me up and spat me out. I was left only with the bitter taste of what might have been and the painful realisation of what actually was,

If there is such a thing and reincarnation then who knows? Maybe next time?