Saturday, November 22, 2003

:: Comeback ::

When I was in elementary school, one of my friends, Neil, lived around the corner from me. We used to play road hockey together sometimes, we both were on the basketball team, and once I remember we played computer Jeopardy practically all-night long one Saturday night. We weren't best friends by any means, but we went to each other's birthday parties, so we were pretty good buddies. The only real difference between us was our choice of favourite sports: Mine was hockey, his, football. Actually, Neil was one of Langley's best quarterbacks. His team's always won, he got to play at B.C Place. He was good.

But then high school happened. And as happens with many kids he went down hill. He "fell in with the wrong crowd" as people often say. He was in my Science 8 class for awhile, but eventually got in too much trouble and was expelled/dropped out of school and that's the last I ever saw or heard from him. 'Til Now.

Over the years I just figured he'd ended up as sort of a deadbeat. God knows enough people from my grade 7 grad class turned out that way. But today my assumptions were proven wrong.

I'm flicking channels and I stopped on TSN to watch the Vanier Cup. Simon Fraser University isn't in the Cup, but they played in the semi-finals last week, and the announcers were talking about it, and one of them mentions "SFU linebacker and President's trophy winner Neil McKinlay." I was stunned. I knew it was him right away, and after some quick 'net research to make sure there weren't two Neil McKinlay's in the CIS I was proven correct. It made me feel really happy, knowing that, to steal a football term, he went from fourth-and-long, turned his life around and is now the best university linebacker in the entire country.

What a comeback.

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