Straight Line

Joe was an athlete, plain and simple. It had been his father’s life-long dream to play in the NFL before his leg injury curtailed all that, but he instilled in Joe from when he was barely able to form sentences just how important sports were. Some kids got action figures, gaming consoles, even movies. But all Joe ever expected to get, all he ever wanted to get, was a football and some sports gear. Maybe even a customized water bottle or two. That was his life, and he accepted it wholeheartedly.

Joe was the type to accept anything thrown at him, whether he was capable of taking it on or not. When he worked at his family’s farm, which lasted until he had moved off to college, he’d always double up on his duties to make sure the work got done and that his body was getting the excessive workout it needed to make it in the big leagues. With the debt his family had gotten themselves saddled with, some shady business that Joe didn’t pay much attention to, they couldn’t afford any membership to a gym, and the cheap schools the family could afford for Joe never offered many chances for sport. So Joe worked, and continued working even after his legs had that stinging feeling, when they’re saying “We’re going to cave in any minute. You should probably stop.” But Joe didn’t stop. He had to be the best, be strong and fast, if he wanted any hope of getting into a college where he could make it.

He couldn’t very much rely on his grades. He understood basic math and sciences, but English always killed him. He wasn’t much of a reader, and any subtleties or meanings that lay hidden behind the barriers known as words and sentences were lost on him. Homework was a problem too, as he often forgot about it in the midst of doing chores and helping around the house. Whatever homework got done was nothing more than a rush Joe did in the morning after a heavy sleep.

“Joe, honey, you can just leave this to me.” His petite yet stern mother would often tell him. Joe didn’t listen to her. "You're overworking yourself Joe! You always say you're fine but I just know that if this keeps up you'll just kill yourself!" Screamed his mother in a tone unbecoming of her stature and nature. But Joe remained stoic, retorting "I'm fine." "Joe, I know what you're trying to do. I know that this is about your father..."

It was this one statement caused Joe to shift his simple gaze on his mother into a cold, hard, stare. "Don't say anything about things you don't understand mom," spouted Joe, only barely raising his voice a decibel and on the tip of showing emotion. "Huh?" "I can do this, I want this, I have to do this. It's that simple. Don't force yourself out of sympathy for me. If you get hurt doing that, I'll tell you from experience that I will feel a lot worse than if I injured myself. So, if you could just get out of the way..." "Joe, I...” his mother was at a loss for words, and Joe merely pushed her to the side. "Out of the way please mother. I have to work.”  

His father never said a word about his overworking himself or his fixation on making it in Pro Football, but that’s because he knew full well. Why Joe was doing this, why Joe was so obsessed with the game, why it had consumed him. Of course he knew, for that’s how he raised Joe. Joe sometimes pondered if his father was ever proud of what Joe was doing with his life, but the thought quickly faded as there were more important things to think about. His father didn’t express much at all, either through words or his face, similar to Joe’s in some ways.  The amount of real conversations the two had held together in one month could probably be counted on one hand.

Joe’s father couldn’t work much thanks to his injury, and around the time Joe had heard about the families debt problems was when his father became a lot more quiet. The fondest memory Joe can think of with his father were the practices they had outside the house, a time when his father seemed more full of life and hope. His father had a smile on his face, an expression that seemed foreign to Joe in the present, and spoke of nothing but encouragement for Joe, such as “Keep moving straight Joe! Thatta boy, you’re getting it now! Work a bit harder on that pass okay? Keep it up Joe, I know you’ll make it to the big time for sure!” Joe’s father had taught him the value of hard work and had imposed that he had to do much of the family chores, partly because of the injury and partly because Joe needed to get stronger fast.

All that work did have irrefutable benefits, as Joe’s body could easily attest. His muscles are huge and bulging, to such a degree that one could even see Joe’s nerves in the instances where he wore a short sleeve shirt. His legs are nice and long, perfect for running and jogging, and they’ve gained strength and durability from the being overworked. Joe didn’t eat extravagantly, and when he did eat it was usually something simple and small. As a result, his abs and stomach area were near the level of quality one sees in A-list movie actors. But his face had nothing distinguishable about it, a plain face inherited from his mother, aside from a few cuts and bruises from working on the farm and at football practice.

Making friends and acquaintances was never a big deal for Joe before college. The most he had ever thought about the subject was the last day of high school, where his fellow classmates greeted each other with various versions of  “It’s been a pleasure!” “Keep in touch!” “Where are you going for college?” No one came to Joe though, or when they did, it lacked the same passion. That may have been Joe’s one regret in the life he lived, a life chasing a lost dream that was not his own.  He’d always self-justified it to himself that he didn’t have the time to make friends, and that he should focus on sports and his family before anything else. Depending on the day, or how his body felt, that statement either rang true or rang hollow.  

There wasn’t much to take with him to college because he didn’t really own much. There were football memorabilia of course, some inherited from his father, some he got for himself with what little funds he had for himself. After walking in on his mother sobbing at the kitchen table, Joe decided not to take any. He had gotten a sports scholarship to attend UC Irvine, thus dealing with the matter of money in terms of his college journey, and now he was one step closer to achieving his fathers dream… his dream. His parents saw him off at the airport in a rough sort of manner, with not much said through words but plenty through expressions and actions.

It was on the plane that Joe asked himself the same question the recruiter had, “Why do you like football?” Joe honestly couldn’t think of an answer. Having to play football, having to work hard and push himself to the limit, had just been engrained to him since birth. His father didn’t have to beat it into him, but all the same he pushed it on Joe well before he could ever have been aware of such high concepts as “life choices,” “careers,” or the wonderful “what one wants to do in life.” It was then, and only then, that Joe actually questioned whether what he done all his life had been right or had really benefited him as a person. Whether he was really going off to achieve his dream. But while the plane took off, he began drifting into sleep before he could ever really think.