Football and Other Unregrets

I have very few regrets about the decisions that I've made in my life so far. There are decisions on which I wish I had been better informed. There are also decisions that have been made for me that I wish had turned out differently. Though, I don't have many regrets, I've been out of control of my life for a high enough proportion of my time to create feelings of regret even though the word "regret" doesn't really fit. I've looked around, and I haven't really found a single word that fits this phenomenon very well, so I usual end up calling them "unregrets" because they are kind of like regrets, but they aren't.

Of course the biggest unregret of my life is not being able to serve a full-time proselyting mission for the Church of Latter-day Saints. When I was 18 and 9 months, I decided that I was going to serve a mission for the church, but the missionary department had other plans, and my mission papers ended up coming back negative. In case anyone is curious, you don't actually get any paperwork back when you're not allowed to serve, you just get called into your bishop/branch president's office where he informs you that you will not be serving a mission, but I digress.

I was inspired to write this post today because one of my good friends asked me a very simple question today:

"Did you play football?"

I was wearing the BYU football shirt new for the 2011 season, so it was a perfectly reasonable question to ask. In all honesty, at 6'2" and a couple bucks and change, I'm surprised that I don't get asked more often, but it made me think.

I would have loved to have played football. I can't remember a time in my life where I didn't like football and watch it frequently. I even have the build of a guy who could play in the NFL, not that I necessarily suppose I would have made it that far. The position I would have played is tight end, for which I would have been perfect. In addition to my impressive ability to catch things (footballs in this case), I have a plethora of lower-body strength that would allow me to effectively block other players, my size and larger. Simply put, I would have loved football and football would have loved me in return.

The problem was that my father had a borderline-irrational fear of me blowing out a knee and never really being the same again. For whatever reason, he allowed me to play catcher in baseball, (my knees did just fine, my ankles actually took the worst of it) and ride a dirt bike around like a madman, but not play any position in football. Since we have way too many lawyers in this country and every organization morbidly fears getting sued for all the contents of its balance sheet plus some, there's a mountain of paperwork that has to be filled out before anyone can play any sport. Since I was under 18 at the time, I could not vouch for myself, but required parent/legal guardian signatures for everything. Since my dad wasn't having it and my mom wasn't going to sign anything that my dad wouldn't sign, I was hosed.

I don't want anyone to think that I don't love my parents or that their decision ruined the life of fame and luxury I could have had playing in the NFL (or merely going to college for free). I just happen to disagree with them on this particular thing. I believe that I possessed enough cognitive and emotional ability, even at the age of 12, to make that decision for myself, and I don't think I would have regretted it. I could even understand requiring me to quit if I got injured even once, but I think totally forbidding me to play based on the possibility of injury was unreasonable.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes things in life get decided for you regardless of your feelings for the outcome. The important thing is to choose wisely how you react to these situations and not dwell on things that you cannot change. If you're a man or woman of God, you have to recognize that He has a plan for you regardless of whether you end up playing football, or going on a mission, or a whole host of other things. And maybe trust the decisions of your children if made with wisdom and discernment. :)

On a totally unrelated note, I've decided that, if I ever have the money and resources, I'm going to get myself an Emerald Toucanet and build it a climate-controlled, steel-framed plexiglass structure on the back side of my house.


Now there's a decision I wouldn't regret.