On a rare commitment-free weekend just gone, I had an opportunity to sit down and watch some footy while the son had his middle-of-the-day sleep and the wife had her head buried in a good book.
The game in question was Geelong v GWS which didn't promote too much interest in me other than getting a chance to see some of my AFL Supercoach players perform. Before the game, as is their want, the commentators went through each team and put up player profiles and co.
Now, I knew the GWS boys were young. Of course, they are. Just as the Gold Coast boys were last year. However, knowing that hadn't really sunk into my head at all up until the year that each one of them was born came up. 1993. Given most of them come from last year's draft, 1993 came up again and again and again.
My mind launched into one of its pondering moods and the number 1993 kept turning through the screws. What does 1993 mean to me? What of significance happened to me in 1993? Shite, I was in my last year of high school. I was 18.
The 'fact' is of course a given. Yep, I was 18 in 1993. Just as these GWS boys are. But what really struck me and set off reverberations in my head, was the fact that it doesn't feel like 18-19 years since then to me. Very far from it. While I certainly don't feel like I'm but a few years out of school or a few years out of uni, I certainly don't feel like high school was half my lifetime ago.
I know that the maths tell me something different, and I know plenty of water has flowed under the proverbial bridge since my high school days. University. Travel. Career. Marriage. Mortgage. Parenthood. But alas, I just don't 'feel' like I'm twice as old as then and that those days are so far behind me.
What is it then that is holding me back from acting my age or coming to terms with where I sit on my life's timeline? I mean, while I haven't tried it for a very long time, my mind still thinks I can kick a footy 50m and jump over others to take a speccie. Or throw down a thunderbolt yorker that rips through a batsman's stumps. Or carry two or three blokes over the tryline with me after storming on to an inside ball. Because I used to be able to do that, so why couldn't I now?
That's the way my mind seems to operate. Well, up until now anyway. Not on a conscious level mind you. Not in a thinking/calculating way. In fact, I don't reflect on any of that at all during my waking/working life. There's too much else going on. But subconsciously, in a non-calculating way, yeah of course I'd still be able to do that. Why not?
But there are reasons for why not aren't there? I just don't think about them so there's nothing to pull me back to the reality. I mean there's the sheer fact that I haven't even tried all those things in years. There's the fact my reconstructed knee might not be able to cope. Especially as it was the reason in the first place I stopped doing all those things. And there's the fact that my body certainly isn't trained to do all those things like it once was. I used to train 4-5 nights a week and play both a seniors game and an agegroup game every weekend so of course my body was far more tuned towards those sorts of activities back then.
That's the reality. And those are the realities as to why I've stopped doing those things. But the mind just doesn't compute all that and seems to conveniently forget certain things while romanticising others. You played with the likes of Michael Voss, Jason Akermanis and Ben Tune. You played against the likes of Fraser Gehrig, Nigel Lappin and Joe Roff. You could have been a contender. You could have been a...you know the rest surely.
So there I was, watching the GWS players' profiles pop up and the year 1993 kept on coming up. And those thoughts just above and those names pop into my head and it hits me even harder. Jaysus christ, those guys have been 'retired' for years! They played long and illustrious careers but haven't been around for nearly a decade in some cases. Shite, the realisation that even my 'glory days' and the guys I shared them with are outdated and old.
I'm not sure if I'm relating the feeling I had on Saturday very well with these words. It's a hard one to pinpoint and to explain. I didn't feel 'old' as such. Not like when people talk about cops looking so young and that's when they felt 'old' for the first time. No, it was more like a realisation that my life has come a long way since my so-called glory days and they're not coming back.
And while many of you are no doubt saying of course they aren't, they're long gone, I guess my psyche and my consciousness had never really confronted that reality and had chosen to ignore it. Or just chosen to concentrate on far more important things. Like career. Like marriage. Like mortgages. Like fatherhood.
Yes, that must be it. I'd moved on. Well, some parts of my mind had while others had not. Hence the profoundness of the lightening bolt that went off in my head when Taylor Adams birthdate came up on the screen. My days as an 18 year old are half a lifetime ago. My days when all of life's opportunities were ahead of me are long gone.
That's not a bad thing though, nor was it a sad feeling full of regret or anything. Far from it in fact. I have a lot to be thankful for and none of that would have happened if my life's journey had taken a different path. It was just a realisation. A thought bubble. A recognition of the reality.
Yes, quite the realisation to have on a lazy Saturday afternoon in front of the telly watching the footy. I'm sure Aristotle must have had similar moments watching nude guys run around at the Ancient Olympics. Or Nietzsche as one of the first games of football took place on the university lawns under his office.
Now, where's that son of mine? I just need to take him down to the oval and show him I can still kick goal from 50m out and....
EDM.
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