Let's Do the Time Warp

Have you ever been suddenly, unexpectedly presented with a bit of information about someone you went to high school with a zillion years ago (or maybe just twelve), and it sort of snaps you back to your teenaged self for a moment and gets your mind thinking about things it doesn't normally spend much time on, like your past and your future and the life you've created for yourself and the nature of time and aging?

That happened to me this morning. I was sitting here in my cube editing, as we editors are wont to do, still kind of stewing over the fact that S and I had just been closed out of an apartment we'd visited last night and liked, but which we found out this morning doesn't take cats, despite the property manager's original claim that it did. I was also contemplating what I might have for lunch. That type of thing. Coworker A appeared in my cube with a Sports Illustrated clipping being circulated by Coworker J, about misspellings of player and team names on sports jerseys. It was an amusing if ridiculous little article, and I was getting a good chuckle out of the player whose Anaheim Angels jersey said "Angees" by mistake but who wore it anyway, and by the guy whose last name was Smith---spelled "Smiht" on his jersey.

Then, I came to the bit about Jon Busch, a professional soccer player for a team called Columbus Crew (presumably in Ohio). Both his first and last names have been repeatedly misspelled on his jerseys, and he's quoted as saying something like, "By this time, you'd think they’d get it right." And then it clicked: Jon Busch. Star goalkeeper for my high school soccer team. Always really tan, with spiky brown hair, arrogant but friendly, worshipped by all for his phenomenal athletic talent. I googled him, and sure enough, it was him. (Also turns out he was born precisely one year and one day after I was. Kind of funny.)

I barely recognized him in his current photo. He looked...well...old. Older, anyway. And not as good-looking as I'd remembered, frankly. (I guess even big-time professional athletes lose their youthful cuteness over time.) But it was definitely him, and his biographical stats confirmed it.

That sent me into the aforementioned timewarp-mindspin. Thinking about Jon got me thinking about high-school soccer games, and my high school's soccer fields, set on a few lovely, green, rural acres. Sometimes my cheerleading practices were held on those fields, or near them. It got me thinking back on my high school's soccer program, which was quite good, versus my high school's football program, which was quite sucky. That got me thinking about Friday night football games, under the lights, with tons of people I knew in the stands. And then I got to thinking about being young, and full of energy, and relatively carefree, and all of that. The world was so much smaller back then, wasn't it?

I felt a slight pang of envy that this guy Jon is doing what he loves for a living, as I always do when I hear of the successes of former friends or acquaintances. But mostly I felt inspired, and sort of weirdly energized. It's nice to know that not everyone winds up hunched over a computer in a cubicle five days a week to earn a paycheck. And I always feel refreshed when I learn of people who are, in some way or another, pursuing something they love. It pulls me out of myself and my immediate concerns for a bit and helps me gain a broader perspective on life in general.

So anyway, here's a little shout-out to Jon Busch of the Columbus Crew. Congrats, dude.