Due to the cold weather this past weekend, I was forced to break out my collection of sweatshirts and fleeces a little earlier than usual. The chilly air was also somewhat depressing and made me nostalgic for summer.
Each summer I try to combine two necessities in life - playing sports and earning money. Money of course follows directly behind athletics in terms of importance, but a man does need to survive. Unfortunately I earned no money at HBO, where I interned following my freshman year, unless you count the 500-dollar stipend that the company was generous enough to provide me with. Also, to my dismay I was only able to play competitive sports once a week - on Wednesdays in Central Park, where I played on the human resources department softball team.
Let it be known that the $500 stipend was barely enough for me to commute from White Plains to New York. And you can forget about buying lunch. I was forced to brown bag it, which can be quite embarrassing in a work environment, especially when your mother writes Daniel Fowler on your lunch bag. The softball competition wasn't much better - middle-aged men and women are not usually the best athletes.
The combination of these two factors, combined with the fact that HBO didn't want me, made it clear that it was time to move on.
I found my calling this past summer working at a local day camp for children aged five through eight. I was hired as the sports specialist. I believe that this title entrusted me with the responsibility of teaching the youths how to play sports. But I adjusted the responsibilities slightly and taught them how to lose in sports. From "duck duck goose" to "red light, green light" to "mother may I" and even on to more common sports such as basketball, I was simply one of the best.
However, where I shined most often last summer was on the kickball field. Not having played kickball since my days on the black top at Post Road Elementary School, I thought it might be hard to get back into kickball shape after a layoff of more than a decade. As I stepped into the batter's box for my first official at-bat in over ten years, I had the jitters. I should have known better. I had always been a natural kickball player, even hoping that they would develop a professional kickball league when I was a child.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that my first kick resulted in a home run.
For six weeks I was able to relive my childhood dreams. Kicking home run after home run, I was able to inspire awe in the kids whom I had been hired to instruct. Some of my fellow counselors were impressed with my power. I even got the phone number of a female colleague because she was so dazzled by my work on the kickball diamond.
Unfortunately, as is often the case in life, with the good comes the bad. About three weeks into the camp came the incident that any athlete knows will happen someday: I let my team down. Playing in the gym because it was too hot to go outside, I booted a fly ball - a sure home run outside - that hit the rafters and landed between second and third. I figured I could definitely leg out a triple. I reached second just as the ball was coming down and a fellow counselor grabbed it. I was going for third. The ball came at me and before I could duck out of the way it drilled me in my unspeakables.
More painful than the discomfort from the pegging was the knowledge that I was out. I had let my teammates down. Feeling pretty low (while flicking away a few tears), I struggled to pick myself up off the ground. When I reached a near-standing position, the gym echoed in chants of "Dan, Dan..." I looked up sadly, only to be greeted by the huge smiles from my 12 six-year-old teammates.
Suddenly it dawned on me: the kids didn't know the difference between kicking a home run and making an out. I was a hero either way. I realized that life couldn't get much better than that. I was doing what I love, playing sports and getting paid ($8.05 per hour).
While I should probably get an internship or some "real job" next summer, part of me wants to return to the kickball field. Playing ball with a group of six-year-olds will do a world of good for anyone's self-esteem.
