Nice writing! And an origin story which I imagine resonates with most of us. Is there anyone who sailed through puberty? It helps to know you turned out just fine😊
Hackley class of '02 here. One of the few who got financial aid and rode the bus to school. I missed my sophomore year of sports while observing, then removing and recovering from a bone tumor. Still, I had a few cases of sharing a soccer and track field with Poly kids. Lots here I can appreciate.
This hit me right in that bittersweet space where the things we once took for granted—speed, ease, certainty—slip away before we’re ready. You capture that moment when the body starts rewriting the story we thought we were telling ourselves. It’s amazing how much setting and era shape who we think we are, until life quietly shifts the ground beneath us.
Thanks for this. Your lovely piece could not have reminded me more of my own dalliances with competitive athletics from Little League through my school days, some 60 years ago. I've been smiling since I read it.
I too am fond of running. I found that I could run a mile in 1956 because of President Eisenhower and his fitness test. I ran in my first cross-country race 2 years later at a boarding school in Maine. It was not something I had ever thought I’d do, but participating in inter scholastic sports was mandatory. The only fall sports were cross country and football. I was small for football and we had to buy our shoes. Cross-country shoes were $8 and football shoes were $20, so there was in fact no choice to make.
Two socially relevant points: My schoolmates came from either old money and new money. It was not difficult to know who was who, but it did not result in significant or very noticeable problems. I came from nearly no money but had a generous rich uncle. Moreover, because we lived in the dorms together, ate together, had the same teachers, and were all teammates, we were in the same boat together.
Running became part of living. That’s probably why I’m still doing it.
You know what the song says: growing up is hard to do. You wrote about it with verve and passion and humility. Good on ya.
Nice writing! And an origin story which I imagine resonates with most of us. Is there anyone who sailed through puberty? It helps to know you turned out just fine😊
Hackley class of '02 here. One of the few who got financial aid and rode the bus to school. I missed my sophomore year of sports while observing, then removing and recovering from a bone tumor. Still, I had a few cases of sharing a soccer and track field with Poly kids. Lots here I can appreciate.
Amazing how losing something as simple as speed can feel like losing a piece of who you are — until you find a new way to measure yourself.
This hit me right in that bittersweet space where the things we once took for granted—speed, ease, certainty—slip away before we’re ready. You capture that moment when the body starts rewriting the story we thought we were telling ourselves. It’s amazing how much setting and era shape who we think we are, until life quietly shifts the ground beneath us.
Thanks for this. Your lovely piece could not have reminded me more of my own dalliances with competitive athletics from Little League through my school days, some 60 years ago. I've been smiling since I read it.
I too am fond of running. I found that I could run a mile in 1956 because of President Eisenhower and his fitness test. I ran in my first cross-country race 2 years later at a boarding school in Maine. It was not something I had ever thought I’d do, but participating in inter scholastic sports was mandatory. The only fall sports were cross country and football. I was small for football and we had to buy our shoes. Cross-country shoes were $8 and football shoes were $20, so there was in fact no choice to make.
Two socially relevant points: My schoolmates came from either old money and new money. It was not difficult to know who was who, but it did not result in significant or very noticeable problems. I came from nearly no money but had a generous rich uncle. Moreover, because we lived in the dorms together, ate together, had the same teachers, and were all teammates, we were in the same boat together.
Running became part of living. That’s probably why I’m still doing it.