The Quarterback

The First Quarter

I now believe, by the way, that love is a dangerous experiment.

Maybe the only reason why I did not believe that in the past was that I was too focused on my football career to experience true love. I wanted to feel it yes, but I did not have the time. I was very busy, not only with playing football and staying in shape, but also with doing well in school, as I found that to be a high priority.

Since I was fifteen, I was the three-year starting quarterback of the varsity team at San Mateo's Junipero Serra High School, alma mater of the legend Tom Brady. In my junior and senior year of high school, I had a girlfriend, yes, but I did not care about her as much as I should have. Maybe I was too focused on football and grades, but I was not recruited by a university, so that career path went out the window.

My other passion, authorship of story, was a better career path, which I hope to prove to you here. But as soon as my football days were over, I was quite sad.

I was injured for my team's final regular season game; my bruised hand made me incapable of playing. With a 4-5 record, we were not going to make the playoffs, and yet we were winning this game by 21. We converted a key third down with 31 seconds left, and honorable yet beleaguered head coach Isaiah Williams called timeout once the clock reached four seconds.

"Anthony, I want the fans to be able to thank you one last time," he told me. "You should go out there and take a knee to cap off your career. Just take the snap and down it."

And so I did, and the crowd let out a roar. The team carried me off the field to a standing ovation, and I held back tears as this all happened, then let them flow during Coach Williams's speech to us.

I would never play competitive football again.

Fast forward to the afternoon of the first day of the new semester. I was hanging with my girlfriend Maryanne, who I referred to earlier, outside school.

"Any college decisions yet?"

"Yeah," I told her. "Boston College has accepted me, as has Michigan. But I'm still waiting on Berkeley."

"Okay. I support you every step of the way."

Maryanne was only a junior, so she had no decisions to make yet. I wished I could still be a junior. It was so much simpler back then. But I would never again revisit those days. That is the cruel thing about time. It is a completely linear idea, at least for us.

Leland, my best friend, joined us. He wanted to talk again about my last football game. I did not want to relive it. I just wanted to move on. To press toward the future.

Little did I know what the future would entail.

But no one can know the future. To try is a fool's errand. While I have heard stories about people who say they're clairvoyant or about people who are said to be clairvoyant, I do not believe those stories. Nor will I ever until I see sufficient evidence or have a life-changing experience.

That weekend, Leland and I went to the Lake Tahoe area to see the snow. Our families had a tradition of going up together over Martin Luther King weekend, that being January 16 to 19 this year.

There was just one problem: another family that we knew had a tradition of visiting Tahoe City. And when we did this last year, their 18-year-old son Colin had some argument with Leland. They have been enemies ever since. But I don't know why.

We got there late in the evening, around nine o'clock. There was more traffic than usual, but the weather was acceptable. It was not that cold, either, about thirty degrees, which is below freezing, yes, but not by much.