Humility, A Rare Find.

I have a close friend that I have known for 25 years. We have hunted together for all of those 25 years and we have raised our kids together. We are indeed close friends.

We have spent a lot of time traveling by car together and we have sat around a lot of campfires talking about sports and growing up. A lot of the time, we talked about football, high school football in particular. Never in the entire time that I have known him have I ever even heard him discuss his high school football career.

A business associate of mine who played high school football with this man in a small town in the Texas Hill Country sent me a newspaper article published on the 25 year anniversary of a classic game between two small towns. It seems Uvalde and Kerrville had a bitter rivalry but Uvalde had prevailed over Kerrville each of the three prior meetings. In this most recent meeting Uvalde trailed by a wide margin at the half. My friend was a senior and a captain of the team as well as the middle linebacker. Like most teams of this size, pretty much every kid on the team was a backup for an offensive starter if they started on the defensive side of the ball, and vice versa.

This newspaper article chronicled the events of the Uvalde team in the locker room during halftime and then back onto the field. To make a long story short, my friend told his team mates that he had not been on a team that had been beaten by Kerrville up to that point and that he was not going to give into them now. He asked the coach and his team mates for the ball. His backup spot on offense was fullback.

During the second half of this game my friend played both ways and made a number of solo tackles on the defensive side of the ball while rushing for more than 100 yards and two scores on the offensive side of the ball. Uvalde won the game and he was named both offensive and defensive player of the week in the district. A feat not yet repeated up to the date of the article.

Now the point of the story is not what this man accomplished on the football field but the fact that in all the time I had spent with this man he never mentioned his high school football exploits. He had never made a peep.

I spend a lot of time talking to people in my work and I listen to a lot of BS. It is a rare day that I don't heart a story about the glory days of high school football exploits. I had a lot of respect for this man before I heard this story about him but I think a lot more of him now. I like the purity of this story doing the talking for my friend.

This hits me right between the eyes, because I do most of my writing about my own experience. I am far from being the poster child husband, father or friend. i make a lot of mistakes. I hope that I can honestly portray those short comings in what I write. I also hope that humility finds a place in what I communicate.