The other night at karaoke - yes, karaoke - a new friend expressed surprise that I had dated a football player in college. I was talking about sports, I think it was about playing dodgeball - yes, dodgeball - and said I thought that the only people who had fond memories of gym class were jocks. This from a woman who is setting up a kickball league, but there you have it.
I was obsessed with jocks when I was growing up. Probably because I was a nerdy, glasses-wearing girl in middle and high schools, and jocks didn’t even know I existed. If they did, it was because they knew that I always had an extra pen that they could borrow or that I could help them with their math homework in study hall. Growing up as I did, in a John Hughes film kind of way, I dreamed about getting a date with said sporty types. They were impossibly fit, good-looking, outgoing, hot. Did I mention hot?
Since I was a dork, I was also a late bloomer. No one ever really dated me in high school, and I was convinced that I would never rate a popular guy as a boyfriend. NEVER. I was convinced that they were out of my league.
Then, college happened. No one knew that I was a nerdy girl there. I could reinvent myself. And reinvent I did.
The dorm room exactly above mine (co-ed housing) was a football room - two of our college’s football players lived there as roommates. Not that this matters, but they were both defensive linemen, so they were huge. And gorgeous. They were also loud and obnoxious and kept my roommate and I up at all hours with stomping around their room. But did I mention that they were hot?
Anyway, one night I saw Adam - my first ever boyfriend - at a keg party (ah, youth, with its red and blue plastic cups and smelly basements). In a modern, jock knight errant kind of way, he offered to plow through the crowd to get me a beer (what a gentleman). Eventually, he walked me back to our dorm. We went to a state school (aka party school) that was located in a woodsy area. That night there were oodles of rain puddles, and I remember pausing in front of a huge one blocking our path and wondering how I could get through it without ruining my shoes (deep thinker that I was back then). Before I knew it, Adam had hoisted me up over his shoulder (with one arm), and carried me to safety (my hero!). Needless to say, I was hooked from that moment.
I enjoyed my new life as a cool kid. I was dating a football player, and a hot one at that! (And they say that only men are shallow when it comes to sex. PUH-leeze, gentlemen. Don’t buy it when a girl tells you that size doesn’t matter. And of course, I’m talking about height and weight here, people. Get your minds out of the gutter.)
I went to all the ‘cool’ parties. People knew my name.
Then, I started to get a big head.
One night, I saw a guy from my old high school at a party. He was a lacrosse player and he was impossibly popular when I was 16. (You knew there had to be a tie-in to the title, right? Thanks for waiting for it.) I marched right over and told him that we went to the same school (he, predictably, had no idea who I was). By the end of the night, he was carrying me home over his shoulder. (Um, I’m just realizing that I had a former life as a cavewoman, in case you’re wondering about all the over-the-shoulder nonsense.)
And it didn’t stop there. Oh, no. I also dated a hockey player, and another football player. And, oh, who’s counting.
The picture on the front of the NYT reminded me of these halcyon days. Like yesterday, I had another one of those Proustian moments, only not as poignant or comfortable.
Honestly, I had forgotten that lacrosse existed until today. I still follow football and hockey, so go figure. Maybe that lacrosse player just didn’t match up. He was, to put it nicely, a douchebag. Not that other jocks are any more sensitive to women’s needs, but I found lacrosse players were always more aggressive and crazy. Maybe equal only to the football players.
Why am I writing about this? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I had a dream about Adam last night, out of the blue, for no purpose under the sun. Maybe it’s because I am more nostalgic these days. Maybe it’s because it’s funny to look back at how shallow I was when picking mates.
These early dating experiences shape us, though. Which is why that friend let out a long, “Hmmmm”, when I told her that I dated a football player. It tells her something about me that she didn’t know before. That a dorky anthropologist was actually formerly not a dorky anthropologist. That I have had secret lives that look nothing like the one I have now. Which is the point of living, really, isn’t it? To experience new things, to try out different ways of living?
In the end, I decided that hot jocks were not my speed. I decided that hot, funny, intelligent writers were more my speed. Did I mention hot? Some things, my friends, will never change. . . .
The boys. Adam is the one in the back row, pretending to lick his roommate Dave’s ear. What was I thinking????
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What were you thinking? More like: What is Dave doing???