I had only 2 real dreams to accomplish as a young child. The first one was to play football in the NFL someday and if I was really feeling extra good in the daydream, sometimes I even dared to dream as far as actually playing in and winning a Superbowl. While I was blessed to have been able to play this game I was absolutely in love with, I played football, a violent and physical full-contact sport, where fully grown men regularly yanked up boys under 10 years of age by their facemasks to scream whiskey breath obscenities into an often crying child's face who was most likely one of the dozen or so kids on the team who were forced every evening after school to endure these brutally painful workouts in August heat covered in stinky heavy pads that were too large and too heavy, the forced to remember these strange violent coordinated dance moves in a military like formation, while the adults they looked to for guidance and answers, coached down wisdom at them and encouraged these young boys and to "kill him". meaning they were to try and hit their friend hard enough to at least hurt them a bit. While I had my days of dreading practice from time to time, I was not one of those kids who eagerly retired after their successful 2 year campaign of begging dad not to make them play next year. I played for a solid 12 years, finally catching peak in my teenage years. While I wasn't ever the MVP on the team, I always was as good as and in many cases better than the majority of the kids next to me as , every year however I was given the same warning from my father, don't count on playing past high school, your father was too short to play college football and unfortunately you have his genes." While I naturally worried every season that maybe I wouldn't be good enough this year to make the team because the kids would be older and better, it seemed like every time I started a new season I quickly would realize the same truth, and end up being one of the best kids on the team again. Still eventually I bought into the doubt and I never put on a helmet again after my senior year in HS.