I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [55]
But I came to understand that first impressions do matter, and as a college athlete, you are ultimately a representative of your team, your coach, your program, and your school. The same is true wherever you go in life, whatever your job may be. There is a right way and a wrong way to act in different settings. It is so important to have a basic working understanding of etiquette. You can't act the same way in a McDonald's as you would in a fine dining restaurant. You can't talk to a coach the same way you would talk to your friends. It is so important to have a sense of the situation and what kind of behavior it requires. It's not a matter of snobbery; it's a matter of understanding how the world works and showing your smarts by picking up on the difference of each setting.
It is a lesson I am very, very grateful for because it is definitely something I had never even considered when I was living in my old neighborhood, and it makes a big difference--fair or not--in how other people see you. It is the same reason that I always care about ironing my clothes and taking care of my appearance. I want to give the impression of being put-together and respectable. Commentator Chris Collinsworth made a remark to Bob Costas when they were doing the commentary for a Ravens game one time that when you first met me you'd think I had just left the local country club. I appreciated that because it meant that I came across as polite and intelligent.
When I sat down with each of those college coaches or went on those recruiting visits, I wanted to make sure that they knew what they would be getting in me: a guy who would play his heart out and give every ounce of effort to the game, but also someone who would represent the program well. After all, this wasn't just a game to me. This was my life's goal of achieving something better turning into reality.
In the end, after visits to several schools and meetings with a lot of coaches, I picked the University of Mississippi. Tennessee and Oklahoma were both schools I liked a lot, but in the end, I was most comfortable about being closest to the community I'd become a part of. Just like I had wanted to go wherever Steve went to high school, I wanted to be near wherever Collins went to college, close enough to see S.J.'s baseball games, close enough for Leigh Anne and Sean to come to my football games. I had been separated once before from the family I loved. Now I finally was part of a stable family, and had good mentors, good support, and a lot of people who believed in me. I wasn't about to give all of that up to start over again somewhere else.
MY SENIOR YEAR, my mother started trying to make it to a lot of my Briarcrest games, sometimes bringing one of my brothers or Craig along, too. Before Senior Night for football, Leigh Anne gave her money to pick out a nice church dress to wear as the seniors were escorted out on the field by their parents. Tony was driving my mother over and they were running late. The announcer had gotten to just before the Os and they still weren't there, so Sean and Leigh Anne brought me back in line to the Ts, where they were waiting to walk out with Collins. Just before they called us up, I spotted my mother running across the track in a gold dress. She was out of breath as she took my arm, but she made it and I walked out on the field with her on one side and the Tuohy family on the other.
That was me, my life. My past and my future were there on each side of me as we walked into the middle of the football field. I had come from one family and been welcomed into another--many others, including the Hendersons, the Franklins, the Tuohys, and the Briarcrest family at large. I smiled as I looked up at the crowd in the bleachers who were cheering for me because I knew I was home.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Miss Sue
As my senior year got under way in the fall of 2004, and I was meeting with all those coaches