What's Your Team? (Blurb)

What's your team?

This is a common question here in the south and in Alabama there are two acceptable choices :Auburn or Alabama.

I moved here when I was about five from Great Falls, Montana... I was a fan of snow, playing with my brothers, and the fort in the play area of the kindergarten. (or maybe it was preschool.. Either way I remember a lot of 'shooting' the girls in the kitchen area on the other side of the room )

So once I was able to call good ole Dixie home I had no clue of this cardinal rule of the south in the choice of a 'team'.

Much like the Fresh Prince it all started on the playground.

Let me take you there for a moment:

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(This is a rough draft excerpt from the 'memoirs' I have been writing on occasion)

Home, school, and the playground were my tiny bubble worlds.  If it did not happen there, I knew nothing of it and neither did I care about it.  One day on the playground I was playing with George and Freddy, two of the older kids who lived in the same apartment complex as us. 

     George reached for the next bar in the monkey bars and swung hard quickly moving across them. I knew I was not as fast, but was not too worried, because his friend Freddy was not good at the monkey bars.  He was standing beside them talking to George.  "George, I like Auburn, you know?" George looked up as I moved to the other side of the monkey bars ready for my turn and George replied, "Yea man, exactly.  I like Auburn too.  I like Alabama as a state and all, but I like Auburn really."  He turns to look at me as I am trying to beat out his pace on the bars.  "Derek, what do you think?" and immediately I realize I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about, so I took the easy way out saying, "I like Alabama as a state" Why not? I did live there.  But George wanted a straight answer, "So you like Auburn too, right?" and so I gave it to him, "Yup, sure do, George, and Alabama just as a state." I had no clue what I was talking about, and totally knew it.  When I got home I did not even tell my parents, because I was just so lost as to what in the world it all meant.  
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As a child I came to a question mark in who I was as determined by those surrounded me and took the side of least resistance... A survival mode I am sure.

I hope I have not done the same with the spiritual in my life.

(More to come on this next week)

 

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