Boiling Point

Remember a time when something ticked you off so much to the point that you felt that tingle come up your neck, you kinda hold your breath and your brain puts together two options of a response.....one you contain yourself and swallow that burning tingle and not regret saying or doing something awful.....or.....your brain lets you cut lose. That is the boiling point. When you reach the boiling point in your life, what you do with it often defines you. I have a boiling point moment that I spent the last 8 years regretting, but not for the reason you might think.

This picture is of the Univ. Findlay practice field, where I spent one long season. I want you to focus on the right portion of the picture before you read the rest of this. You might see a white line, this represents the field goal post of the east endzone, and to the right, you will see a creek. Now the boiling point.

Every day we spent a 10 minute period throwing fade routes into the corner of that endzone. You might be thinking, "what's the big deal?" The big deal Magellan, is that an overthrown fade route ends up racing down the creek like Huck Finn minus his raft. I can't tell you how many times a ball might bounce off of a finger or I threw a crap ball into that steep filth ridden creek. When this happened, did we send our Grad Assistants in to get it? Of course not. We sent the young freshman QB, even if it wasn't his fault. That happened to be me. This isn't the boiling point.

Our starting QB got knocked out, literally, one game. So that meant the football fishing freshman QB, yours truly, was now the starter. Tuesdays we started practice with offensive meetings and hurry up offense. The best part, I had class tuesday afternoons that caused me to always miss that meeting. So of course the day I miss they happen to put in a new play. No one tells me. I show up in time for Hurry Up drills, like always, but this time I'm the starter. I hop in the huddle, start moving us down the field, and wouldn't you know it, they call the new play. I stumble through it in my head thinking I know enough about football, I can't figure this out and they'll never know the difference. Until I couldn't.

I had to ask for help. Insert Boiling Point. All hell broke loose. The head coach, which I will refer to as, the anti-christ, started going ballistic. Then his little henchmen the O-line coach came in and caused that burning tingle of anger on steriod feeling. His exact words were:

"Wise, why don't you just throw the ball in the creek, that's all you know how to do anyways"

Now come the two options in my brain. On one hand I thought about ripping my helmet off, Chucking that football into the creek and saying "How was that you son of #%#$#" Walking off the field with my middle finger in the air. Or

option 2. Nod, ask the backup how to run the play, and execute it.

For eight years I have regretted the fact that I did option 2. Man I wish I would have done option 1. I thought that way until recently I started reading the blogs from two of my good friends Mike and Lides. I realized the past that the boiling points I dealt with, were ice caps compared to theirs. I am almost embarrassed to think that I had it so bad, playing Div. 2 football. What a joke. You wanna see guys that had it rough but came through every boiling point, look no further.