[There’s one video at the end of this post. Please click the link above to read/watch directly from the website.]
Some things we learn as children are best unlearned as adults.
God bless my dear grandfather. He taught me so many important things, like the importance of faith, family and character.
He was very embodiment of the best of the Irish temperament:
- funny,
- resilient,
- faithful,
- a born storyteller.
Yet he nursed a resentment for the English. The horrors of ten centuries of English rule left an indelible scar on his psyche.
He’d cry at the drop of an hat over a battle the Irish lost in — 1690.
I grew up believing the English were my enemy as they had been his enemy, and his father’s enemy and on down the line.
England would always be our enemy — NEVER our friend.
Then as I got older I found myself questioning what I’d been taught.
What if I made an enemy my friend?
What then, Grandpa?
This very question came about when a new kid joined our soccer team when I was in the seventh grade.
His name was John and he was from — Liverpool, England.
John was a big, strapping kid with a big smile with a quiet confidence that was beyond his age.
When I first heard his accent it sent me reeling — This kid is REALLY from England!
I instantly hated him.
Now, I knew nothing about him other than he was English, but that was enough for me to cancel him out altogether. Such is the power of a generational prejudice.
But from the get-go the certainty about my prejudice was challenged. For instance, John looked like my cousin Dennis who was my hero.
Then we got on the soccer pitch and my head exploded.
This kid was good — really good!
When our coach ran us through our competency drills it became instantly clear John’s skills were off the chart. He possessed unbelievable speed, was a superb ball handler and had a rocket shot.
If that weren’t enough, he had brilliant mind for the game.
My enemy was playing on our team as:
- OUR Striker .
- Our Scorer
- Our All-Star
Something had to give!
And that something was the thousand years of prejudice I carried around in my heart.
This is what happened.
Our Coach, Eddie Craig, assigned me the defensive position in the center of the field to feed the ball to John, then to let him do the rest.
The match-up worked great.
- I got lots of balls to John
- He made lots of goals
- I got lots of assists
- The team got a lot of wins
So there I sat, on the horns of a dilemma. Our team was utterly dependent on the right leg of — an Englishman.
How could I root for a guy I hated?
The coup de grâce came in our final game against the dreaded St. George.
Their star player was this big kid who, like John, was a scoring machine. We met up in the finals and, as we expected, the game went back and forth with their guy trading goals with John.
We were tied up in the final minute of play.
Somehow, I managed to steal the ball at mid field and then drop in a perfect pass to John.
Then, in a brilliant display of broken field running, he ran up the field with me covering the rear, and just as he was set to rocket a shot into the net he suddenly dropped the ball back to me.
- I took the shot.
- I scored the goal.
- We won.
John just looked back and gave me a thumbs up.
On that day, in that game, on the soccer pitch, I permanently disinherited my prejudices against the English people.
John and I went on to play many more years of soccer together and became great friends. Friendship had broken the spell of the generational prejudice that had so crippled my ancestors.
In unlearning the lesson of hate I learned the lesson of friendship.
Before my grandfather died I shared my story with him. I remember he tapped my hand and gave me an impish wink. I thought maybe he too had found his way of making peace with the past.
So what to make of this story? You want peace in the world?
Teach your children to play on the same team…
Just a thought…
Pat
Copyright © 2023 Patrick J. Moriarty. All Rights Reserved.