“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Ferris Bueller’s insightful words played on my mind as I warmed up for our Lion Pride Night football game against John Cooper. Looking around is not something I usually do, instead tending to keep my nose on the grindstone. That night, though, I decided to soak up the atmosphere as much as possible. After all, I only had a couple more Friday Night Lights remaining.
As my eyes scanned the stadium while the alma mater played before kickoff, they settled upon a group of Lower Schoolers, who were decked out in their blue and gold next to a pile of snacks.
Twelve years ago, that was little Grayson Redmond, eagerly waiting for the game to start to witness the athletic feats of my senior buddy, Chris Roach.
To say Chris was my hero would be an understatement. As I witnessed every play he made on the gridiron, every point he scored on the basketball court, him being a brick wall in the lacrosse goal as he helped the team win a state championship, his legend only grew in my mind.
This is probably what made me so nervous last week, as I acrobatically traversed the unusually muddy quad on my way to the Lower School to meet my own buddy, Francis. I realized I had absolutely no idea how I could live up to the massive standards Chris had set.
Now, I couldn’t tell you what he thought of me, but I thought Francis was a pretty cool guy. We share a love of baseball cards and broccoli, and he may be the best Simon player I’ve ever seen; I can’t wait to hang out with him again. But I didn’t just learn about Francis during this Community Time sabbatical, I learned something about myself too.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always appreciate Chris more than I bet he knows for all he did for my first-grade self, but I think it’s time to leave him in the past, if only for a few months. Now that I’m in his shoes, it’s time to blaze my own trail and be the best senior buddy I can be.
From here on out, instead of measuring my success in terms of how I stack up to Chris, I’ll measure it in the width of Francis’ smiles. Maybe one day 12 years from now, he’ll look around like I did and reflect on the good times we had together. I may never know for sure if he does so or not, but he’ll know.
And that’s all that matters to me.
