Before my sophomore year of high school, my best friend Paul said he wanted something more out of our high school experience. He wanted to not be thought of as a weakling or a geek or whatever his words were. His plan was to join the football team. He asked if I wanted to do the same. Sure, why not?

We signed up and did two-a-day summer practices in 1990. After one week, Paul quit. He never told me he wasn't going to be at practice. He just didn't show up anymore. And he and I never spoke again. He ignored me in the hallways or looped his arm around his new girl-du-jour to show me that he was doing fine without me and without football. It was very awkward and I'll never understand what happened or his motivation behind it. He just discarded three years of friendship and created a new circle of friends basically overnight.

Whatever.

I kept going with football. I made new friends. I played. I never started, but I got enough field time to be able to say I legitimately played. I also played my junior and senior years and received a varsity letter.

My sophomore year, I was a third-string offensive tackle. My junior year, I moved inside to be a third-string offensive guard. I hated offense.

Finally, my senior year, I was a defensive tackle. Defense makes sense to me. I knew what I was doing and how what I did helped the team. There were statistics to be had and achievements to, well, achieve.

But, I was mostly in it for camaraderie. I had new friends. I belonged to a team. We looked out for each other. It was something I never really had in Connecticut -- save for Wayne -- or in middle school in Illinois. So I never really tried too hard at football. We had plenty of guys who were better than me and I was fine with that. I played. I did my thing. I got to wear a jersey to school every Friday. I loved it.

An odd thing happened my senior year. Our Defensive Coordinator -- I'll call him "Coach A" -- started taking notice of me. I had no idea what I did, but I didn't like the extra attention. He would call me names. He was starting down the dreaded name derivation path to full-on bullying. It started with "Applegar" and "Applesnap" and "Applesnappy." There were nearly a dozen names by the time he was done. I can't even recall them all.

He'd throw them at me when I lined up for a practice play. "SNAP TO IT, SNAPPY!" he'd scream. "CAN'T YOU MOVE FASTER?" "CAN'T YOU HIT HARDER?" "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, APPLESNAPPY???"

Sure, the names weren't terrible. I didn't run home crying to mommy because Coach A called me something mean and nasty. But, considering my experience with this bullying gateway, I wasn't particularly happy with it. It never motivated me to try harder in order to make Coach A shut up. I just got insular and withdrawn. I built up my emotional defenses.

I spent my senior year as a second-string defensive tackle. Our team was really good. We were so good, in fact, that there were varsity games I wound up playing an entire half. I also started on the JV squad so, in effect, I saw more play time than most of our starters. For me, this was a good thing. A great thing. And I wasn't going to let Coach A fuck it up for me. I just stopped listening to him. Stopped caring.

A handful of years ago, while hanging out with Brian, one of my few active high school friends (who was also a football teammate), he told me that after two-a-days our senior year, I was at the top of the depth chart to start at tackle. Funny, I don't recall that at all. I would think I'd have noticed that.

Then it dawned on me that my camaraderie-based approach probably resulted in my not really caring about a depth chart. I was in football for friends. I knew I wasn't good at it. I just did it. And, since our team had so many people I perceived as better than me, why would I bother to look at a depth chart?

This worked against me. Since I never knew I was "top of the heap," I never knew I needed to fight to keep it. And I didn't. I lost the role to a junior. And the immediate backup spot was also taken by a junior. I became the second string and, since I didn't know any better at the time, I was fine with it.

But, after hearing what Brian told me, I started to wonder if I had completely misinterpreted Coach A and his name calling. Was he really bullying me or was this some sort of perverse positive motivation through negative tactics? The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if Coach A really liked me but just had a fucked-up way of showing it. Did he see something in me that even I didn't? Did he think I was capable of better things?

Well, I couldn't ask him. He had moved on to another school. I had no idea where. Likely as a head coach.

This past weekend, Katie, Nathan, and I were at a Labor Day cookout at Brian's house. Another old teammate, Chip, was there. Chip was the ultimate footballer in high school. A three-year varsity "ironman" starter at offensive center and defensive nose guard, he's the guy I would've lined up next to on the defensive line if I had fought to maintain my place on the depth chart.

At one point in the afternoon, Chip happened to call me "Applesnap" and that started a whole conversation about high school football and Coach A. Since Chip was a defensive god and basically the right arm of Coach A and his defensive strategy, I asked him about the name calling. I posited my theory about how I only recently came to think that maybe it was Coach A's way to motivate me.

Chip confirmed it. According to him, Coach A loved me. He thought I was going to be a great defensive starter and that, along with Chip, we'd be really solid on the defensive line.

So, basically, I missed out on a season of high school "fortune and glory" as a varsity starter because of my personal defensive shielding that I had developed due to bullying. I misinterpreted Coach A entirely. Admittedly, pulling me aside and just telling me would've likely worked better, but that clearly wasn't his style.

I am not excusing his approach to coaching. The taunting, all of it. Just pointing out an odd little thing about it. Maybe if I knew him better, I would've gotten it. Or if he knew me better, maybe he wouldn't have done it at all. Who knows?

While I wouldn't change the life I have now for anything, you still wonder "what if?" And you realize what it was that stopped you from attaining that "what if."

Bullies.

Fuckin' Connecticut.