Hoping for a happy ending
By: John Saccenti
I want to play defensive tackle, break through the offensive line and sack the quarterback. I want to play the outfield and make a leaping catch over the centerfield wall. I want to wrestle in the NJSIAA state finals.
But, unfortunately, my playing days are over.
Like most, my career as an athlete probably would have ended at the end of my senior year in high school. But, with a violent twist of the knee, my days as a jock ended prematurely and on the visitors’ sideline during a South Brunswick football game with South River in 1987.
It was my first varsity start, which I earned earlier that week and only after making a conscious decision to stop being a "scrub" and to start playing angry. I lasted all of three plays. I had been blocked by an offensive lineman while my foot was firmly planted on the turf. I remember feeling a pain that seemed to turn the insides of my knee into goo.
Even before the surgeon had his way with me, I knew that those three plays were the best I could hope for in a high school athletic career that was less than spectacular, but still fun.
I’ve replayed those plays in my head thousands of times, and, through the power of imagination, and maybe a little hopefulness, the story almost always has a better ending. I play well, make a few tackles, and live to play again. Nothing flashy, but a happy ending nonetheless.
Making matters worse was that I also wrestled, and had committed myself to doing well that year. I attended summer wrestling camp and, as I said before, vowed to stop being a scrub. I had high hopes for a moderately successful year.
Ending my athletic career is by far the least traumatic thing that happened that year. Several weeks after my injury, a good friend of mine, Kevin, died in a car accident. He was one of those friends we all seemed to have, the one we spent hours playing with as a child, having sleepovers and building treehouses.
A month or so after that, my youngest brother, Chris, also died.
These three things knee injury, and two deaths have one thing in common other than that they all happened at around the same time. They have made me aware of the importance of getting things right the first time, and trying to live with without regret.
Sometimes I drift off into thought, wondering what it would be like to go back to high school and beyond, and do things that can only be done with hindsight.
I think back to sixth grade. Kevin and I had had a fight and I said things I shouldn’t have. We eventually made up, but the fight is one of the first things I think of when I think of him.
I think about the last time I saw my brother. He’s sitting in a hospital bed in Minnesota, miserable and sick from his cancer treatments. I’m waving goodbye, and I’m slightly annoyed that he won’t give me a high-five. My other brother and I are leaving the room, on our way home to New Jersey. It was the last time I saw him. He was 8.
I also remember a telephone call I got from him a few months later. I was in the hospital recovering from knee surgery and he was in his Minnesota hospital bed, maybe the same one I remember seeing him in. He called to check up on me, and he gave me some advice on hospital survival.
Then there were those times when I teased him. I probably even made him cry on a few occasions, usually for no other reason than that he was my younger brother.
Spending chunks of the fall watching football and staying up late watching the Mets on TV help make up for the disappointment of a mediocre athletic career. But not everything is that simple.
When I replay the memories I have of people I’ve lost there is no happy ending. The memories are just there and there is nothing I can do about it.
I wish I could have one more conversation with my brother and do the things an older brother is supposed to do. I wish I could say "hey" to my friend once more, and talk about building treehouses and playing pirates.
But, like I said, it’s not that easy. And, all I can do is hope that, someday, just having the memories will be a happy enough ending.
John Saccenti is news editor of the South Brunswick Post. He can be reached at [email protected].