He sat on the sidelines, eyes darting back and forth but body still. It was a brisk evening in October, but he braved the cold in order to watch the junior league football games.
To him, it didn’t feel like much time had passed between the man he was now and the football player child he had been, though it had been over three decades. Instead of being the cold old man he was now, he used to be that child out on the field whom everybody cheered for. Those cheers were not in vain; he deserved every single one he got.
He glanced to his left at the proud father clapping and chanting for his son. That used to be his father, screaming on the sidelines at him to go, go, go! He huddled farther into his jacket, partly in an attempt to protect his wind-bitten cheeks and partly to block out the reminders of what he no longer had.
The boys on the field were panting and sweating despite the chill in the air. He could see the adrenaline in the gleam of their eyes, in every puff of exhaled breath. They practically reeked of excitement.
He wished he were young again, back out on those fields running the ball back for touchdown after touchdown. He wished it were his father doing the obnoxiously proud cheering. But it wasn’t, because he had blown it all.
He could only watch the junior league football games, for those didn’t stir bitter memories like high school games did. High school was where the real stars were made, where futures were decided and the experiences would be imprinted upon brains for a lifetime to come. The memories he had made during that time shoved to the forefront of his mind every time he was near a high school stadium, so he took to avoiding them completely.
When the game ended with the home team winning 17 to nothing, the man packed up his lawn chair, hiked up his hood, and trudged his way back to his truck. He threw the chair in the bed of his pickup and hightailed it out of there, ensuring he would not get jammed in the post-game traffic.
His home was dark, a bit run-down, but it was all he had. The kitchen table had only one chair, which didn’t matter because he never had guests, and his living room was sparsely decorated with one torn couch, a battered TV, and a lamp. None of this bothered him. He knew it was because his money was going to a much better cause, at least in his mind.
In high school, he had given in to the temptation of readily available drugs. He had smoked marijuana the first time simply because everyone told him it was fine, and in all his years he had never witnessed any repercussions for such an act, so he figured there was no harm to be done and smoked the joint when it had been handed to him. Besides, it was cigarettes that got you hooked with one puff, not pot.
But upon that first inhalation of the drug, he had become unknowingly addicted, and from then on smoking was a habit. He kept it hidden from everyone but his close friends, until one day he was caught with the stuff.
It hadn’t been pretty. He had been a star football player for the varsity team, loved by the student body as well as the faculty, well on his way to getting a full ride for his excellence on the field. His popularity hadn’t been able to save him, and he had been kicked off the team days before the championship game.
His reputation from then on out had been tarnished. His friends, even the ones who had smoked weed with him, pretended he was scum not worthy of being stepped on by their shoes, and slowly he became a pariah within the school. Not because he smoked weed, because everybody did it, but because he had been caught.
He graduated but did not shine in the process, not like he would have had he not been busted. He didn’t go to college, not like he had been planning to ever since he entered high school. Instead he moved out at eighteen, working dumpy jobs and not caring where he wound up. Finally he settled in the town he was currently in, and there he stayed.
Here he had found a dealer who could supply him with heavier stuff than what he had been using, stuff like cocaine and heroin. Eventually he found the cheapest house he could, and all money that didn’t go to necessities went to his drugs.
It was how he wound up here on a Wednesday night, shaking from the cold because he had no heating, with a needle up his arm.
He watched those junior league games not because he cared about the team, but because it provided him the opportunity to reminisce what had once been his. He could watch those kids, pick out the ones with the most potential, and envision them living the life he had been meant to live. It made him wish for a chance to change what he had done in his youth, so that these fantasies could actually be memories.
But he had not heeded the warnings of those around him, and he had done what was considered a harmless drug, but it was one that had destroyed his future and kick started his unbreakable habit now.
He pulled the needle out of his arm, tossed it in the trash, turned out the lights, and curled up on his couch. He would have to be up early for the next football game tomorrow.