How I became a writer Part VI

Title: How I became a writer

Part VI

“Do you want to race?”  The question came out of the blue from my friend Matt Shreve, as we were walking away from soccer practice to the school below.  My friend was a big WWF fan (WWE now) and really liked the Ultimate Warrior.  He dwarfed me in physical size but had more in common with Andre the Giant than Usain Bolt or in that time period, with Carl Lewis.

“What?” I asked, thinking I had heard wrong.  Matt had asked me other crazy things before.  I’ll never forget when Matt Shreve and Mike Simmons walked over and asked me if I wanted to do a coco butt every time the team scored.  “What’s a coco butt?” I asked.  They both explained it is when you head butt someone.  “We’ll do it after we score,” they told me excitedly.  “Um...no!” I told them.  They insisted I still do it but allowed me to put my fist in front of my forehead.  I’m not sure if they actually did the coco butt thing on each other or knew I was gullible.  They did the modified coco butt with me anyway, hitting my fist instead of my head. 

“Do you want to race?” Matt repeated.  If Matt had challenged me to wrestling or a cage matched, handcuffed to each other, I would have immediately turned him down.  He would have broken me like a twig!  But a race?  Really?  “Uh, sure,” I said, confident I would win.  I was a size thirty then and fast, or so I believed.

“Let’s race to there!” Matt said, pointing to an object close to a hundred meters away.  (That’s about 110 yards for those of you metrically challenged:)  On the soccer team, Matt, Mike Simons, Fred Gribbin, and myself were on defense for the Bethel Warriors.  I was the bottom of the diamond and my job was the last line of defense before you reached the goalie, who was a real giant!  I had been in many footraces to the ball and at least reached the ball at the same time if not a little before, so I assumed I was fast.

Matt made sure I was ready and then said, “Go!”  As a track coach, I have timed the 100 meter dash many times and the biggest thing you dread is photo finishes...no danger of that here!  Matt destroyed me!  It wasn’t even close!  I didn’t understand it at the time but there is a big difference between running one all out hundred meter dash and running twenty in a row.  The reason I was good at foot races in soccer was not my speed but rather my endurance and moderate speed.  The other thing I didn’t understand was “fast twitch muscle” but I wouldn’t understand that for a long time yet.

Assumptions can be a dangerous thing.  I assumed I was bad at basketball so I never tried in gym class.  Oh, I played defense very hard but I wouldn’t shoot.  One day a double-teamed, Jim Fletcher passed me the ball as I was wide, wide open.  I merely passed it back.  After the game he said, “Why don’t you shoot the ball?”  I told him I wasn’t any good at shooting the ball.  He encouraged me to try.  I think he was sick of getting double and triple teamed but he was nice about it.  Unfortunately I didn’t listen to him.  I “KNEW” I didn’t play basketball and only did it in gym class when I was forced to.  God has a sense of humor.  When I became a youth pastor do you know what one group of kids lived to do?  You guessed it, play basketball!  It was easy to pack the church's small half court gym with a bunch of teenage boys.  Suddenly I realized what Jim had been trying to tell me all those years ago, as I played game after game in that tiny gym.  I started shooting and got blocked spectacularly many times.  I finally learned to do a skyhook, so I could at least shoot the ball and got okay at it.  When I became a pastor at Austinburg, kids and adults noticed that I did the skyhook often, even in situations that didn’t call for it.  They would say things like, “Uh-oh, Pastor’s breaking out the hook!”

Why didn’t I try that in high school or at the very least attempt to get better?  Belief is a powerful thing.  It can drive a human to reach for the moon or give up before even trying.  I think my biggest problem in high school is that I didn’t want to look stupid at things.  Of course I didn’t realize the only way you get better at things is by looking stupid at first.  I tell kids in track who think they’ll never get an event, “Hey, you gotta look stupid before you become great at something!”  I don’t think anyone is going to put that on a fortune cookie but it is still true...I’ve seen it so many times.

After writing that first story about a character named “Knife”, I got a notebook and was determined to fill it with stories.  Why?  Did I assume I was good?  I think I did, because I was excited to read those stories to people I trusted.  I really didn’t think much about my drive to write.  I didn’t realize that over twenty years later I would be just as driven, but I would assume the opposite about my writing skill.  I would stare at a green Wal-mart tote full of notebooks...full of story fragments, some lengthy, others short, and assume I wasn’t any good.  That was a very low point and it drove me to my knees.  I asked God why was I so driven to write, if I could never write anything worth publishing?  That wasn’t my cry in high school!  I don’t think I ever prayed about my writing in high school.  I assumed I was good.  I assumed my writing future was bright and so with all the confidence of youth I attacked my new dream.

This drive was so new to me, I couldn’t stop writing, even when a friend invited me over to his house.  Poor Jimmy Benem had no idea that his friend was half mad with a new desire to write when I walked in the door.  He lived near the mall in a very nice area.  I loved going to his house!  We would walk down to the playground and talk, play video games, watch TV, or throw the football.  Jimmy was my opposite in everyway.  He was cool looking, confident, and he was a real deal jock!  I was none of those things at that time and he was still my friend anyway:)  I hung out with him for a little bit and then I insisted on finishing the short story I was working on.  “Story?” he asked, perplexed.  Somewhere in Jimmy Benem’s house I finished my first notebook story and I insisted on reading it to him.  Lucky guy! 

It was a story I had named “Reforger” and it was based on a video game Stephen Schoeder had lent me around Christmas time...or maybe Jim Rafferty?  I had played it all Christmas eve, only abandoning it when mom called me to do things.  I don’t know what Jim thought about a story based on a game he had probably never played, written by an enthusiastic writer with an extremely low skill level, but he listened to it.  Jimmy took it in stride as if he had friends over all the time who wrote works of fiction and then regaled him with the tale.  I got the hint though through Jimmy’s subtle but kind way, that even Jimmy had his limits and would not do that to him again.  But I kept writing...oh, did I keep writing!