Lessons From a Party Boy
Here’s a little survival tip from the homeless. I hope you never have to use it, but please pay attention. Some of the unlikeliest people wind up on the street.
Say it’s late at night, time for bed, and you’re looking for a nice cardboard box. Whether or not you find one, you’ll need to stake out a dry, not-too-smelly piece of asphalt. Then you notice some ants in the neighborhood.
“What you do,” says a friend we’ll call Tom, “is you get a Diet Coke.”
How is not important: Maybe you’ll find a half-empty can in the dumpster. Maybe you can cadge the change to buy one. Maybe you calculate the risk-to-reward ratio of shoplifting, since a night in jail might not be so bad.
“You pour the Diet Coke in a circle around where you plan to sit. The ants won’t cross it because of the sodium content.”
Whether this actually works, I don’t know. Tom doesn’t know firsthand either. He heard about this trick from his big brother, a guy we’ll call Jack.
And Jack, sadly, knows it well.
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This is, in a way, a story of the season--the season in which hundreds of thousands of American high school boys are transformed into those proverbial gladiators of the gridiron, giving their 110%.
And among those boys are the elite who are trying to impress the recruiters in the stands, trying to be among the chosen few who will go on to play major college football. They are, in essence, the Jacks of today. But they aren’t the only ones who can learn from Jack’s story.
Jack was that American archetype: the football hero at my high school, the Big Man on Campus, the guy all the other guys wanted to be. He wasn’t just a great athlete, he was intelligent, funny and handsome enough to be elected homecoming king.
Football was where Jack really stood out. At age 17, Jack stood two inches over 6 feet and weighed 215 pounds. He was quick, tough, smart. He was our middle linebacker on defense and fullback on offense. He was our blue-chip prospect.
That happened to be the year that Nebraska’s Johnny Rodgers won the Heisman Trophy. I remember that because Jack told us how, when he visited Lincoln on a recruiting trip, Rodgers showed off the Heisman to the recruits. Jack also told us that the temperature in Lincoln was below zero, so he wouldn’t sign their letter of intent.
He enrolled at another football power on a full-ride scholarship. We all expected big things from Jack, in part because we knew he’d accomplished so much with so little effort. You’d never see Jack pumping iron in the weight room, and we knew Jack loved to have a good time. We figured that the college competition would whip him into shape.
We figured Jack, with just a little extra effort, would be a star--maybe even make it to the pros.
That didn’t happen, because Jack never stopped partying.
He was put on academic probation and kicked off the football team. The next year, he was at a community college and starred again. This time he was recruited by a smaller university that played Division II football, which eliminated its football program in a budget-cutting move not long after Jack enrolled. But Jack still had his scholarship and could get a fine education.
Whether Jack ever graduated, I don’t know, and at this point it hardly matters. Somewhere during his college years he married and became a father. He got a job with a small company and, being a personable guy, soon became the owner’s right-hand man.
Maybe he wouldn’t be a football star, but it seemed like life would work out OK.
That didn’t happen either. What happened was drugs. Jack never stopped partying. His addiction cost him his job, his family, his home.
All of this I learned from Tom, who had spent so much of his life in his big brother’s shadow. I didn’t see Jack for many years, but Tom and I got together every so often. When I asked him about Jack, he answered with escalating disgust. His brother had become a bum who ate out of dumpsters and knew that Diet Coke could keep the ants away.
The last I heard, Jack is back home now, living in the same room he lived in when he was the big man on campus. His parents took in their wayward son, and I trust he’s making a sincere effort to turn his life around.
I saw Jack for the first time in about 15 years last July, at his father’s funeral. He was wearing a sport coat and tie. I was pleased that he looked healthier than I expected. And I was flattered that the old football hero smiled when he saw me.
“I know where you’re going to hit me,” he said, striking a gridiron pose, right arm crooked as if holding the ball, left hand extended to fend off a tackler. He was referring to a particular play on a particular day more than 20 years ago. I remember it well, though it left me with a mild concussion.
We shook hands and shared a few memories--glory days, such as they were.
And we skipped over what followed.
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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com. Please include a phone number.
