I met Jesse in the ‘hood when I was 13. I was roller skating past his house and he was doing skating tricks out front. We decided to go skating together.
After 2 years of painstaking practice, lots of falls, and too many “clips” from faster skaters at the community center, I’d reached a point where I was a better than all of the white kids at my school and most of the kids in the ‘hood. But Jesse was something else. He was phenomenal. It’s like his legs had springs built into them. As we raced along the streets, Jesse would fly. I’ll never forget when he jumped over a flight of stairs that must have been 15 feet long. Jesse was friendly, charming and full of personality. He told me he had a blackbelt in karate. We became fast friends that summer.
One day, we were hanging out in the street when Gerard sauntered over. Gerard was a tall, lanky, neighborhood bully who smelled bad. He wasn’t exactly a friend of mine, but he would occasionally hang out with me when he wanted to – because I really had no choice. Gerard started messing with Jesse and it looked like a fight was about to happen. I warned Jesse to back off because Gerard was a foot taller, older and a brawler. I didn’t want Jesse to get beat up. Jesse laughed. Gerard pushed him and the next thing I knew, Jesse had lifted Gerard up in the air over his head and was threatening to slam him into the pavement. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Gerard made nice, Jesse put him down and Gerard slinked off.
It was a fun summer hanging out with Jesse, until I moved away.
A few years later in high school, I ran into Jesse in gym class. I’m not sure he remembered me. I had grown from a short, fat white kid with a bowl haircut into a lanky, lightly muscular man who looked liked Jesus with my long hippie hair and a full beard.
Jesse, looked the same, just a little bigger. He was an average sized teenager – maybe 5’8 and 160 lbs. He still had his dynamic personality and huge smile. I didn’t ask him if he still skated or if he remembered me. By this time, we kept to our own circles of high school friends (his black, mine white).
In hindsight, I regret not trying to rekindle our friendship.
Jesse did well in high school. He had good parents and was smart. He was a star athlete on the football and track teams. He had lots of friends and girlfriends. He was on track to go to college on an athletic scholarship.
I only saw him during gym class. I remember three specific incidents that awed me:
- During open gym we would mess around on the Universal Weight Lifting Machine and play ping pong. While I was playing ping pong, I looked over and saw Jesse lay down on the bench press, put the pin under the entire stack of weight and then pressed it 10 times. Nobody else in our class could press it even once.
- We were playing volleyball. Jesse and I were on opposite sides at the net. Someone set the ball high. Jesse and I both leaped up, him to spike the ball and me to block it. I was confident I had this. But as I reached the peak of my jump, Jesse keep going up and up until he was at least 2 feet higher than me. He spiked the ball so hard it careened off of my face before shooting out of bounds. I was embarrassed a little, but was even more amazed at how high he floated above me.
- The last incident was in a 5-on-5 basketball game. It was the white kids against the black kids. (What can I say? Those were our cliques.). My friends normally played hockey in half the gym while the black kids played basketball in the other half. For whatever reason, we challenged each other to a game of basketball that day. The game was to 21. My team was killing it. We were up 18 to 3 and gloating. And then the black kids decided to start playing. Unbeknownst to us, they had deliberately been toying with us, letting us seem to dominate. They scored 17 baskets in a row. For the game point I was under the rim and Jesse was racing towards the basket. I was in position and ready to block his shot. Jesse jumped up and literally jumped over my head before dunking the ball and winning the game. Over my head. Un-f***ing believable.
It was a fun game. They deserved to win. We all had a good laugh afterwards about it.
Looking back, I think we all missed an opportunity to be friends because we self-segregated into our white and black groups throughout high school.
I was thinking about Jesse today.
I realize now that Jesse was a natural athlete. Unlike me, he didn’t have to work hard to learn to skate, to run fast, to be strong or coordinated. He was born that way.
For sure he worked. He practiced football. He ran track. He lifted weights. He got his blackbelt. But his prowess for physical activity was light years beyond average people.
No wonder he gravitated toward sports. He was great at them all.
I was born with other gifts. I have a highly analytical mind. I can grasp complex concepts and apply them to solve problems. I am a gifted speed reader.
No wonder I excelled in school and gravitated toward academics. It makes perfect sense to lean into what I was already good at.
Some people think that weightlifting makes you big and strong. That swimming gives you broad shoulders and a lanky build. That sprinting makes you muscular and explosive. That yoga makes you thin and flexible.
I heard a scientist on a podcast say that we probably have that wrong. He suggested that big and strong people get into weightlifting because they were born big and strong. That broad shouldered, lanky kids have the right build for swimming and find their way into the pool. That sprinters are naturally explosive, muscular and fast, which attracts them to the track team.
When I was younger, I thought we could all become anything we wanted through sheer effort and work. As I got older, I saw that this was simply not true.
It’s not true in academics, in financial success, in athletics, in art, in music or in any other area of life. It doesn’t mean we cannot get better through effort and persistence. It just means we are likely never to be the best. And that’s OK.
Some people have a head start. Which appears to be perfectly natural.