The Mighty Thorn is Back

. . .at the bridge to Asgard

What are you doing these days?

The person asking me this question, the father of my high school best friend, who is hosting this gathering of buddies at his house, has always known the answer, because my life, my identity, has always been clear: I’m playing baseball and football.

I reflexively start to say those words, but they stop in my mouth because they’re no longer true. Also, I don't have a job, and I’m no longer even a student because I dropped out of school.

I pivot to the next closest true thing: due to serious injuries to my head and shoulder, I guess you can say I’m a former athlete and college student, and I’m trying to figure out my next move.

Neither of us knows what to say next because this is foreign territory. Who am I if not an athlete?

I end up explaining how I got my injuries and why they’ve caused me to stop playing, but everyone there knows by looking at my formerly weaponized body, which has now shrunk from 240 pounds to 184 pounds, that it’s much more than that.

Over the next few days, I form a comeback plan and begin to execute it.

I will reinvent myself.

I will return to the University at Albany, not as an athlete, but as a student.

I call the Registrar’s Office at the school, tell them the story of what I’ve gone through, that I want to come back, and what I want to do there.

To my great relief and excitement, they let me back in. I don’t even have to reapply, just register for classes and pay for the first semester.

Since I have no money to do this, I’ll get a Pell Grant, take out a loan, and get a job as a carpenter in Washington, D.C. A bunch of guys I know are building a bridge and living in one house. Twelve guys. I will join them.

I will take the semester off to do this job, and I will save as much money as I can to go back to Albany.

I will major in rhetoric and communications and unleash my inner intellectual, the one who’s been waiting for this opportunity, but has been buried behind facemasks and baseball gloves. The major appeals to me because it explores how and why people use words, symbols, and media to convey messages, influence others, and shape society. It trains individuals to critically analyze and strategically craft arguments across various personal, political, and professional contexts.

In short, studying rhetoric and communications will give me an essential toolkit to make sense of the world and my place in it. To navigate life, which is what I’ve been trying to do.

I decide that, because I have missed a year of school, I will take six classes per semester instead of the typical four or five. And I’ll do this while working 20 - 30 hours per week because I have to pay for school myself since I will no longer get any financial assistance from the school.

I’ll get my semester’s’reading list six months in advance so I can have already read all the books before I get there. I’ll read these books at night, after my construction job in Washington, while everyone else is out partying.

This is an ambitious and audacious plan. The same kind of plan I devised and executed when I was a competitive athlete.

While there are many potential flaws in my plan, one stands above all the rest: I have no carpentry skills and no idea how to build a bridge.

I see this as a minor inconvenience.

On my first day in Washington, I borrow someone’s old tool belt, tools, hard hat, work boots, flannel shirt, and blue jeans, stomp in puddles so I look like I belong, and walk into the construction trailer on the job site.

I’m a carpenter, and I hear you need carpenters, I say. When do I start?

This is the equivalent of putting my helmet in my opponent’s chest. Of throwing a fastball under the chin of the other team’s best hitter to let them know who’s boss. With one big difference: in those cases, I knew exactly what I was doing. In this case, I have no idea what I’m doing, so my display of confidence is completely unearned.

By noon, I am demoted to a carpenter’s trainee—a laborer, essentially—because it’s obvious I lied to get the job and don’t know the first thing about carpentry. But I am strong and willing to work hard, so I get credit for that.

Not before I go through a period of hazing, however. My foreman, a gruff Australian guy, mockingly calls me college boy, spits tobacco juice on my boots, makes me change a truck tire that’s taller than I am with lug nuts as big as my head, and carry rebar—long iron bars—several at a time, all day.

I go from $7 per hour to $6 per hour in the span of four hours. I work double time, and sometimes triple time, so I can earn as much as I can.

Back at the house, there are two kegs of beer continually on tap in the living room. There are piles of pot, pills, and cocaine on the table, which the guys hit so they can tune up before they go out for the night, and after they return—if they return.

I sit in the corner, under a lamp, drinking water, reading my books as the guys taunt me and call me a nerd, an egghead, and derogatory names that question my manhood.

It doesn’t bother me, because I know who they are and what they’re about, and I know who I am becoming and what I’m about.

I’m on a mission, I’m moving forward, and nothing’s going to stop me.

The Mighty Thorn is back.