My Journal #266 - We had each other . .

I still haven’t heard from the friend that may be having a rough time. Two weeks ago that would have killed me. One of my biggest fears is to know that someone I care about is in trouble or hurting, and I can’t get to them to help. But now, I’m just moving on with my weekend. I can’t make someone accept my help.

But guess what? It reminded me of a story.

My senior year in High School we played a monumental game. My school was from one of the three big cities, but my particular school was way out in the country. My team was a group of guys that were raised on farms and ranches. We were lean and quick, but our strength came from the fact that we were close.

We had been together for many years. We had bled, sweated, and fought together on the field. We had been there for each other off the field too; through family deaths, breakups, fights, parties, and even work.

That year we made the State Playoffs. Our second game in the playoffs was with a monster team from Dallas. Our biggest guy was about 250 pounds, yet they had dozens of guys heavier than him. I was our fastest guy and they had a bunch that could blow past me. We had 37 guys on our team and most of us played both sides of the line. They had over 80 on their team and “platooned” their players to stay fresh.

That team had only had three touchdowns scored on them that year. They averaged scoring about 40 points a game. Needless to say, a small school of "cowboys" was considered no match for this dynasty. We were 24 point underdogs going in to the game.

But we had each other.

We did lose that game (sorry, I know winning would have been a better story). They kicked a field goal with no time left on the clock to beat us 30 to 28. Yup, we had scored 4 times on the team that couldn’t be scored upon. Not too bad for a bunch of skinny “kikkers” as we were called back then.

The point is that even though we lost, we did more as a group than we could have as individuals. We did more together than anyone other team could have done. Man for man, one on one, we would have been killed. But we did better than expected because we had each other.

So anyone that wants to “wing it” alone through life, so be it. I’ll quit worrying.

I did have my third date today. It was with the dating site girl for a day at my pool. She reminded me of someone, and that sort of freaked me out when I met her. I hadn’t notice in her pictures how much she resembled someone else. I wonder if I picked her with subconscious thoughts of that person.

But I had a good time.

Use your imagination for the rest because I won’t tell.