At some point I resolved not to go gently into middle age. I was not searching for a new lifestyle, or one to recommend to others. Not for a second did I think of writing a motivational book on how to be happy in your 40s.
The change in direction happened spontaneously, and at times recklessly. With steadily increasing vigor, I resumed a level of physical activity I had not known since childhood and never looked back.
It’s been fun, I can report, but also humbling.
Twice in the last three months I have come home from Wednesday night practice with a black eye. My sport, by the way, is Gaelic football, a fast, occasionally brutal, turnover-riddled cross between rugby and soccer that is a national sport of Ireland, a country I have never even visited.
If only I were in fourth grade and had earned these stripes standing up to the class bully! Instead I was simply playing defense.
I try to be one of those irritatingly persistent defenders, always keeping pace with the person who has the ball and throwing my hands in any direction the ball might be sent. And I was doing no more than that when another player frantically pulled the ball away from my greedy hands while thrusting his jaw in the direction of my face, which I withdrew too slowly to avoid contact. The result was a brushstroke of blue and green below my right eye.
These things happen, right? In a week or so, the bruise faded.
The second time, I was again playing defense. My teammate was guarding the man with the ball, who looked, I thought, something like a civilian version of the Incredible Hulk: large-pawed, massive-shouldered, and pretty fast for a guy who, when standing still, measures about 6′2″.
In the first half, Civilian Hulk had knocked my shoulder with his shoulder, sending me spinning like a top out of bounds. I realized then that it would be wise to avoid the superhero, but, on defense, one goes to where the action is.
So, as the other defender harassed Civilian Hulk, who was striding powerfully toward our goal, I stepped into position and threw my arms out, ready for the double team and hoping to force a bad shot. But instead of going around me, Civilian Hulk decided to go through me, running head first into the left side of my nose.
Several people attested to hearing the knock of skull on facial bone. I, too, heard the awful, depressing sound—depressing, I think, because it sounded inanimate, like an object hitting the floor, which was all wrong because you knew it was living, breathing flesh that had caused that hollow knock.
I walked off the field, wondering if my nose was broken, saying, “That’s it. I’m done.”
A kind woman on the sideline took a photo of my face to show me the damage. It didn’t look that bad, but it felt like a headache throbbing inside my nose. Fortunately, the pain did not get worse. After a few minutes of rest and some ice to my schnoz, I rejoined the game and finished the second half.
The next morning, the color on my eye was a deep raspberry. It looked like someone had finger-painted the inside of my eye socket. “It’s like a really big tear,” my son Ben said.
Wearing a shiner, I feel anything but shiny. I feel dimmed. Everything else about me becomes secondary. All people see is my black eye.
At work, my colleagues all wanted to hear the story, which led to many learned comments about it being time to hang up my cleats and the importance of not being “that guy.”
A cliché in its own right, “that guy” is invoked for any number of venial sins: yelling angrily from the sidelines during a children’s soccer game, wearing a blue dress shirt with a white collar, knowing a little too much about food or beer or wine. “That guy” is an all-purpose loser, but his greatest failing is that he is oblivious to his failings. He doesn’t know that he is “that guy.”
And he doesn’t know the world has reduced him to this one thing. Like the other day, I was standing in line with Ben at a fast food restaurant when a beautiful young woman walked past and looked straight at me, holding my gaze just long enough that it seemed intentional. For a split second, I thought it was possible that she was looking at me because she found me attractive. Nope, I realized, she was just looking at my black eye.
