I don’t know if your high school experience was like mine, but I often felt unloved, misunderstood, and alien to those around me. I felt like some anomaly in the halls. I wasn’t conventionally attractive, not particularly sharp or acute, and most certainly devoid of athletic ability. I was a picture perfect assemblage of mediocrity. Not ugly enough to be a circus wonder, not quiet enough to be a wallflower, not loud enough to stand out from the throng. I was there. I occupied space.

I waited for it to be over.

I had fantasies, and they varied as I grew. I’d assimilate new information and imagine some new fantasy for myself. I’d be a poet; no, a rock star; no, a novelist; no, a screenwriter; no, a restaurant manager, far away from the rural background of my uninteresting upbringing. I’d be something else, and if not that, I’d be elsewhere. My fantasies were myriad.

But I had one that I kept returning to, and it made no sense. Not to me, for certain, and if I ever shared it I believe it’d have been lost on anyone else, though I never dared. Yes, if I had one fantasy that I could tell you kept bubbling up in my subconscious it would be this:

I wanted to sneak into the high school football field on a random night and take a shit on the fifty yard line.

It’s a mystery even to me: I didn’t care for high school sports, nor did I care for its near inescapable hold on my small Texas town. People loved it, and I felt no animosity towards their attraction to it. I, literally, didn’t want to shit on their dreams. But something in me did.

I didn’t want this fantasy, but I couldn’t rid myself of it. I knew if I did it, it would anger soooooo many people. It would be inconvenient, messy, disappointing, and would likely scar anyone who saw it or heard about it. It would end whatever life I’d eked out for myself, as no one would ever remember me as anything other than “the kid that shit on the 50 yard line.” I’d close myself and try to will it away but it’d keep coming back, often larger than ever.

I kept it to myself, obviously. You can’t bring this sort of thing up in anything resembling casual conversation, and certainly not polite company. I sat with my family and friends, smiling and nodding, and never letting them know that I wanted to shit on the 50 yard line. There were times I even convinced myself I didn’t want it. But, when it got quiet, and the platitudes of camaraderie faded away, I knew it was there, taunting me as my little dark secret.

Then, towards the beginning of my junior year, 28 years ago today, my brother, 13 months older than me, took a shit on the 50 yard line of the football field. The news spread like wildfire, and his life was over. He would always be known as the boy who took a shit on the 50 yard line of the high school football field.

Well, shit. Literally.

Now, even if I wanted to follow through on the disgusting fantasy that I swore up and down that I didn’t want, I couldn’t. Because let’s be honest, you can’t be the second guy in your town to take a shit on the fifty yard line of the high school football field. And to be the second guy in your family to do that? Forget about it! That option is off the table. The shame he brought my family; my mother, my father. I could never revisit that on them.

Now, this fantasy, that I will repeat I never wanted, was stripped from me. This disgusting act that had permeated my fantasies for years was suddenly voided. Return to sender, address unknown. I couldn’t do it. I had to carry on knowing I’d had this demon on my shoulders for so long and could never feed it.

I woke up one morning and realized that the fantasy that had followed me for so long would remain that: a fantasy. I hung it up, and tried to move on as though it had never entered my mind. I’m not the gut who ever entertained the idea of shitting on the 50 yard line of the high school football field. I mean, look at the guy who did! I’m not him, and I would never want to be. That guy was insensitive, and didn’t think of the larger consequences of his actions. What a dick! Fuck that guy.

But can I tell you that sometimes I am secretly jealous of him? That he did the unthinkable thing? And that I hate him for it? It was supposed to be me.

It was supposed to be me.

It’s been 28 years since I first realized I couldn’t ever shit on the 50 yard line of the high school football field. I’ve since become a restaurant manager, far away from the rural background of my uninteresting upbringing. I’m something else, or at least, I’m elsewhere.

But I feel like I can tell you: I still occasionally think about taking that shit on the 50 yard line of the high school football field*.

*This story is completely true, except that whenever I say “take a shit on the 50 yard line of the high school football field” what I really mean is “kill myself”. This is what it’s like to live with depression in the wake of a suicide.

It was supposed to be me.