I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [34]
The message was pretty clear to me: MJ was never going to go hungry. If sports could make you so famous that you could always pay rent, then that was what I was going to do. After all, I didn't see many people in my neighborhood headed to regular jobs each morning, so athletics was kind of the first real career I recognized that interested me.
Of course, it turned out that every other little boy around me seemed to have the same dream--they were all going to be either professional athletes or rappers. Some wanted to be both. Rap was a popular option because rap stars were all over TV with the fancy cars and pretty girls. There seemed to be a lot of stories about kids from the projects making it big in the rap world and shaking things up with the establishment, but I knew that wasn't really my personality. Sports was the road for me.
When I first came up with that idea, to become the next Michael Jordan, I just figured it would be something that would happen to me when I grew up. But as I got older--especially as I hit my teenage years--I started to see a difference between myself and the other kids who had my same dream. There were the kids who wanted to become something, and there were the kids who were working to become something. The ones who wanted it ended up getting involved in drugs and gangs--the easy way to some quick cash and the most common route to take. The kids who were working toward it were the ones who were showing up to school, trying to be responsible, and studying players instead of just watching sports. It was a much smaller group.
Even though it wasn't the easier way, I decided that I wanted to be one of the kids who was actually working toward the goal, prepping myself for the kind of life I wanted. For me, it wasn't about the money or the flashy lifestyle or the power. If I had wanted that, I could have easily joined the Vice Lords or Gangster Disciples, and with my size, I probably would have climbed up the ranks as a bodyguard and started bringing in the money quickly. But it was a whole different way of living that I was after, so I chose to take the other route.
I took that personality quirk I've always had of being an observer, and I focused it on sports. I didn't just watch games to enjoy them; I paid attention to the way the athletes moved and what the different plays were. I really studied the way the game was played and the players themselves. I learned everything I could about how they got to the pros, and by the time I was in eighth grade, I knew that I would have to go to college if I ever wanted a shot at playing basketball or football. But by the time I got to the ninth grade, I knew that college was not going to be an option for me.
That was when I decided to learn about junior colleges, where a lot of these players went before going to a big-name school. If I could figure out how to make that happen, maybe I would have a chance. First, though, I had to figure out how to get through high school.
Yeah, it's true that I slacked off sometimes, going to school just for the free lunch and sports practice. It is tough to show up every day with your homework done when the kids around you don't do it and encourage you to just hang out with them. It's also tough to do what you're supposed to do when you feel like no grown-ups--not even most of the teachers--even care if you do it or not. In the end, I realized any success I might have would come down to two things: 1) finding good people to surround myself with; and 2) taking responsibility for myself.
Not long after I moved back home after foster care, I met a kid in my neighborhood