High school

[ServoKeen]

It was 1997, Freshman year of high school for me. I had started coming out of my shell that year, started making an identity for myself after being known as quiet compared to my younger, more popular brother in middle school.

I was still considered a nerd, though. I was smart but didn't apply myself, so I was looked over for the mentally gifted classes. But I was smarter than some of the other kids because I could read and spell, so I got picked on. Constantly. Including by this one teacher.

He was a science teacher, just out of college. He didn't play any sports but he was friends with a real famous quarterback for the university he went to, the same quarterback was playing in the NFL at the time. He'd brag to us about phone calls he'd had with his friend over the weekend. He once came into school with a black eye and years later I found out it was because he was out drinking with his buddies and someone hit on his hot wife and he got into a fight. Whatever.

At any rate, he reminded me of every bad 80's ski lodge villain that somehow got a teaching degree. He used to talk about how great a role model Tiger Woods was. He made us sit through Tiger's one-on-one with Oprah Winfrey that he'd taped. He used to say stupid catchphrases like "If you fail to plan, you'd better plan to fail." Rob Gronkowski could totally play this guy in a movie.

Towards the end of the freshman year, one of our local professional sports teams was doing well. He got this big giant white board and was talking about how we all were going to track the team's progress on the board, etc. He then picked two students to pass out the night's homework assignment.

At the time, I was still growing. I had a huge growth spurt over that summer that sent me over 6 feet tall. I didn't realize I"d grown so much so I was still a bit clumsy. As I was passing out papers, I accidentally tripped over the wooden base of the whiteboard he was just bragging about. The whiteboard crashed to the ground and got a big black mark on it. He was pissed. He coudln't believe I did it. He called me "Goober" for the rest of the year. He got all of the other kids doing it, too. A year later, I was wearing all black clothing and listening to The Smiths. It wasn't until I was 24 or 25 that I actually started watching and liking and playing sport again.

If I saw this man today, 15 years later, I (feel like) I would punch him in the face.