It didn’t matter how badly I needed to go to the bathroom. It didn’t matter if I was starving and dinner was on the table. If it wasn’t – if I tried to resist – I had to start all over again, until I got it right. The pattern might vary, but there was always a specific rhythm, and it had to be followed. First came the touching: I walked through the house tapping certain objects in a particular order. I was 10 when the symptoms began to appear. I often started crying right there on the field. But when I didn’t – and when the other team’s parents started cheering and the kids who weren’t in green began leaping all over the field – I knew what it felt like to be exposed, all alone at a moment of spectacular failure. At the same time, I was terrified I wouldn’t. At that moment, I felt the weight of the whole team – which, to a kid, meant the whole world – on me. Then suddenly, the other team would race down the field and the ball would sail right at me. “If you play goalie for half the game,” coach pleaded with me, “I’ll let you be the striker for the other half.” I sighed, and did as I was told, restlessly watching the action I wasn’t involved in. As a goalie, I was one goal away from being a villain. Playing up front, I was always one goal away from being a hero. If I was standing in goal, I couldn’t score. Standing in goal was as bad as standing in the outfield in tee-ball. Because I was tall and relatively fearless, the coach of the Rangers wanted me in goal. I ran past the other kids, got to the ball first, and blasted it up the field. I couldn’t dribble or trap a ball or even complete a pass.
My first team was called the Rangers, and we wore green T-shirts. By the time the other team had gotten three outs, I was running wild all over that outfield, waving my arms and shouting, caught up in this imaginary game. So as I stood around in the field, I’d make up an imaginary game in my head. At best, they might send a ground ball rolling toward first base. I stood and waited as a bunch of short kids swung and missed. Because I was a big kid, standing head and shoulders above all the other boys my age, the coach put me in the outfield. When I was six, my mom signed me up for sports leagues.
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