It Makes Me Smile

 

On the wall of my Mancave is a piece of art from the hand of Spencer Meagher. It is taken from a picture published in the Alton Telegraph in the fall of 1974. In it, a young man is running with a football. Two defenders are bearing down on him. The caption was headlined, “wary eyes.”

I treasure that watercolor. My wife kindly gave it to me for a birthday present a few years back. When I look at it, I  smile.

It transports me back to an incredibly important time in my life when  I learned many lessons about hard work and dealing with disappointment. The art of course depicts me as a 17-year-old running back about to be clobbered by two kids from O’Fallon.

I can’t imagine someone taking that memory away from me.

Wednesday, the Illinois High School Association blinked. They left a whisper of a possibility that we will have a football season in the state….albeit in the dead of winter. For a moment, consider being 17 and entering your senior year at Fairfield Community High School. My teams sucked. Fairfield is endeavoring to put their fourth consecutive undefeated regular football season in the books.

This could all go south….but….I like the small slice of optimism offered up by the IHSA. They could have cancelled everything…but they didn’t. I’m sure football and volleyball athletes in our region felt gratitude for the reprieve.

It leaves the door cracked open for the creation of a life memory.

One that could put a smile on a face decades down the road.