We Never Really Escape the Gym-Class Draft

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I was never picked last. Or even second to last. I take pride in that.

When the captains were selected and the teams chosen, I always stood in such a way—off to the side, but not too far to the side—that I appeared at once ready and aloof. Here’s what my body language said: Yes, I can help you, but please know that even if you don’t take me until after Dennis, even if you take me dead last, you cannot hurt me, for my kingdom is not of this world. Such were the brutal days of the gym-class draft, which, in my life, ran from third grade to high school.

It began with a phys ed teacher, either a sadist or an adult too lazy to do his job, who’d name captains and leave them to assemble teams—for kickball, softball, dodgeball, floor hockey or flag football—one player at a time, meat-market style. After having been the subject of perhaps 500 such drafts and chosen everywhere from number one overall—that was the day we had girl captains; thank you Stephanie Rowe!—to 18 of 22, here are the questions I ask myself 40 years later: Were these auctions the source of all my problems, the insecurities and panics, the angers and paranoia, that still haunt me? Were they the cause of the occasional drinking-binge, meditation retreat and need to write? It’s the sort of alienation you experience in junior high school but feel forever. Being just another number among a pool of available picks, you see yourself, maybe for the first time, through the cold eyes of an appraiser.