Dilemma of a High School Nemesis

Alright I had about five or six topics in Yojimbo that I was going to blog about, and maybe I still will. But something like this doesn’t happen every day. I’ll start with the history. I played multiple sport when I was in school along with core group of friends. And there was one individual (leaving unnamed, I’ll get to why in a second) from Fort LeBoeuf we had a number of run-ins with over the years. If you where every to lookup a definition of cocky this kid’s picture would probably be there. Now I am not sure if he ever realized the degree that we all abhorred him nor do I remember all the details as to why.

There are three occasions that stick in my head. The first was I think 7th & 8th grade basketball game. He had been his normal cocky self all game and to make things worse the refs were not calling that close of a game. It came to a head when he took out one our players hard enough that his glasses went all the way across the court. A fight broke out after that.

The next memory is quite small and makes one think they are in a bad movie. During a 9th grade basketball game, he actually took his finger licked it, held it up, and made a sizzling sound in the face of our point guard.

The final one was during 13 year all-star baseball tournament. We had already beaten them once or maybe they had beaten us but it was two loss tournament and whoever lot this game was out. He happen to be the catcher of other team. So, his jaw was going all game. To make things worse the umpired end up being related to someone on their team (for some reason I think it was him, probably because it makes a better story). But the game came down to a controversial call in which our guy was called out for interfering with first baseman. Well my dad who was our coach protested the game and it went all the way to Williamsport (HQ for Little League) and they found in our favor. We had to then finish the game which took all of one batter for us to take the lead.

Now he was pretty short and his talent didn’t match his cockiness (not that I was all that great) but by the time we were playing varsity sports he wasn’t. So, I kind of just forgot about him went to college and on with my life. Then, the other day while I was work on one of the servers I saw his name as one of the teachers in the district and made me chuckle. I wondered if it was the same person. Today I was going into that building to fix another server that was have network problems and there he was walking right at me. It made me pause for a second then I just gave the typical man to man head nod and walk by. Now he maybe a perfectly nice guy now but he has one of those jock faces that just looks cocky whether the person is or not. Also, while I recognized him I highly doubt he recognized me because I look a lot different ( 6 to 7 inches taller, a beard, no Recs Specs) and I wasn’t one our main stars.

This all got me thinking about how we perceive people and how we think they perceive us and how foolish this really is. If nothing else I got a good laugh at the whole thing.

AJSPS

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