Conflicting Topics: Sports vs. School
Alan Andersen
ENGL 1100.46

When I was six years old, the first book I remember reading was a book entitled This Is. It was a book about a mouse who roamed around in the wilderness and came across different animals and plants. Every time he would come across a new animal, he would say “this is a…”, and he would say what it was. The book was written to help first-time readers to learn sentence structure and new things in the world. When I first read the fourteen page book, I was so amazed that a mouse could know all these things that I had never learned about. When I was older, I realized that the mouse actually didn’t know, but was used metaphorically as a human being who understood what these organisms were. The reason I started to read when I was young was because of this book. It showed me that being able to read well was a talent or ability that would later help me in life. My mother pressured me to read whatever I could because most people do not get by without being able to read. My father wanted me to read, but he also wanted me to focus on doing athletic events that would teach me team unity and group skills. Reading in my life is based on the experience I had reading the book This Is and the pressure of my mother to be able to read well.

This Is was the very first book I can remember hearing as a young child. My mother had read to me before that, but she was always reading to me. When I first started to read the words and comprehend them, it was due to the book. This Is was only fourteen pages long and did not have a complex sentence structure. It showed me how a sentence fell into place with adverbs, nouns, subjects, and prepositions. At the time, I had no idea of what those things were, but as time went on, I understood that those basic parts of a sentence were in the reading that I was doing at the age of six. Later on that same year, I began to read more challenging books that would enhance my knowledge of the world and English as a whole. Those books were entitled Ice Cream Shop, The Way the Wind Blows, and a Children’s Bible. All these books were very simple and short, but at that age, attention spans did not last very long, especially for a hyperactive six and one half year old. The one that had a bigger impact when I was older was the Children’s Bible. Learning about God’s Word has helped me a lot in situations that have come later on in my life. The Bible that I read took the condensed form of the New Testament and reduced it to an easier read that made sense to a young person.

At this point, I was trying to speak like an adult and use larger words that my parents used. One of the words I tried to use that I heard my father said was "outstanding." He was talking to my older sister about a soccer game in which she had played in. I remember sitting on his shoulders, hearing him congratulate my sister on the good game. Later on that night, my mother had cooked a big dinner, and I said that the dinner was “outstanding.” My father laughed so hard that I began to cry because I thought he would be proud of me for using the more complex vocabulary. At age ten, I can recall looking back that the book This Is and laughing about how easy it was to read. But at the time of age six, it was a more difficult book to read by myself. It is funny when looking back on things that happened when I was younger; the first thought that comes to mind is, "What was I thinking?" It’s hard to believe that at the time the things that were cool weren’t as “awesome” as reading a book.

Conflict can be described as a different point of view between two or more persons on the same subject. This was the case in my household when I was growing up. I can remember getting a bad grade on an English paper. When I was around the age of eleven, I brought the paper home and showed my mother. I let her down because I told her that I thought I had done well on that paper. That same week I played in the seventh grade football game. Being a sixth grader, I was nervous about how well I would do. My father was very proud of me for playing above his expectations. At the time, my bad grade was put aside and I was on good terms with him, but on bad terms with my mother. Schooling was very important to my mother because when she was growing up, she struggled to get the grades her mother wanted. She told me that she didn’t want to see me struggle like she did. She missed all the fundamentals learned in the early years of school. She wanted me to focus on those fundamentals, so that later on I could learn the harder material more easily than she had to.

In eighth grade, every student had to read so many books and take a test on them to see if we had actually read the book. Well, instead of reading the book, I would have my friend take the test and then tell me what the questions were. This was cheating, but it enabled me to not have to spend time reading. I used that time for other things like lifting and hanging out with my friends. I was eventually caught in the middle of my eighth grade year and almost expelled, but my mother was a teacher at the school, so they cut me some slack. I had never seen my mom so disappointed in my life. I felt like she didn’t even want me as her child. My dad was mad, too, but he would always get over it a lot quicker because of the sports.

High school was a big change for me, just like college is now. Classes require more work, time and effort. I never caught on to that my freshmen year in high school. I thought I could breeze through it just like middle school. I had a rude awakening when I had to write papers, make book reports, and read books longer than 200 pages. The concept of high school was a shock and making the grades to be able to play sports was a tough ordeal. Tutors helped me a lot, but I felt as though I couldn’t do it by myself. As I moved up in the ranks of high school, it progressively got harder. I learned to deal with it and get by with what I had. I know now that wasn’t the best mindset to have at the beginning of high school. Sophomore and junior years were almost the same regarding reading. Essay requirements, mandatory reading, book reports and projects over miscellaneous topics were all part of the curriculum. I had help on them or had someone do them for me so I could get by. That was how I survived most of the time; I had it in the back of my mind that I couldn’t do it by myself. Senior year was different, though, because I had to figure out that I couldn’t go through life having somebody else do the work. Even my parents noticed that I was making better grades and doing better with school. My athletic career wasn’t at all affected, so my father was happy. My mother finally witnessed me reading a book that wasn’t from Spark Notes. I matured my senior year, just in time for my one and only college experience. I am thankful for finally waking up and realizing that school is just as important as the sports that always came first.

My parents are divorced but not because of me and my liking towards sports over reading. I used to think that, but as time went on, I noticed that they had other problems besides me. They would constantly talk about how school was more important than football or any other sports. My father’s argument was that sports taught discipline and teamwork. My mother would argue that the chances of me making a living off of my athletic talent were very small. My father didn’t want to listen to that because he was very successful as an athlete and thought if I worked hard enough, I could do the same. He was a twelve varsity letter winner, meaning that he played three sports for four years and lettered every year. This is a very hard achievement to accomplish. He then went on to play baseball at Purdue in Lafayette, Indiana. He was drafted by the Detroit Tigers, but never was able to play because of his injuries. It was his dream that I do the same, except go further than he did. He would always come to my games and support me. He was my lifting coach and pushed me harder than any coach could. Lifting and running was what I did to become a top athlete. I played the same three sports he did in high school. Football, basketball, and baseball, ever since the fifth grade, are what I played year round. Always the same schedule every day for almost eight years.

This ongoing conflict of their son being able to be smart and athletic didn’t really resolve until my mother had noticed that I would never be the scholar she wanted me to be. I was a sophomore in high school and my teachers were sending letters home saying how I was not putting forth all the effort that I could be doing. She again sat me down and continued to stress the importance of school, but I was not going to hear it. Sports were my priority in all of middle and high school. My father always supported my athletic career, no matter how expensive or time consuming. Lifting, clinics, camps, and practices were what I put my time into, and school came after that. Reading was not going to be the priority because I had fallen into the routine that sports came first, friends came second, and finally, school was last. For me, reading was a job or task that I didn’t want to do. I liked contact sports, and reading had none of that. Sitting down and not moving for more than an hour had no appeal to me. I saw my mom do it and some of my friends, but I just couldn’t find was so fun about it. I don’t think of myself as a "stupid jock," but I would stereotypically fit that role. I would meet new people and tell them I played three sports. The first thing I would hear would be, "Oh man, you’re dumber than a box of rocks." That wouldn’t really hurt my feelings because, deep down, I knew that they didn’t know me. They didn’t know that I could read, write, speak, and function just the same as any other person who liked to read and write.