My stomach and heart lurched simultaneously. As I type, I still find it a little hard to breath. What do we do, as parents, when we read about Owen Thomas, the football lineman for Penn who recently took his own life?
Life is a series of risks. It’s a trade-off here, a decision there. It’s riding a roller coaster, flying on a plane, playing a game.
As a rational person, for example, I understand that there is a very low probability of anyone stealing my son from the bus stop. Do I still worry about it from time to time? Sure. Do I keep him from the bus stop? No, I don’t. I suppose it’s a roll of the dice, but I know our odds are good.
Similarly, we ride planes. We have hurled through the air, with our children, in a big hunk of metal, through the night and over an ocean, even though I had acquaintances on this flight. As I got ready to begin my semester abroad, they were returning from theirs, but they never made it home. My friend, Laurie, was supposed to on that flight with them, but stayed behind for a week of travel. I can’t imagine how hard it was for her to get on the next plane to come home. But, still, we fly.
And football? Would it be easier if we had the numbers? If my son weren’t born clutching a football? It’s his own thing, see? We’re not a football family, we didn’t groom our boys for the field. Soccer! Tennis! How about basketball? But football? No. It wasn’t our thing. And then one day, this tiny little guy grew up to be a whole two years old. He watched. He learned. He turned three and started catching and throwing. He watched and learned some more. His whole being is wired to this sport. And, naturally, if the doctors could say that for-sure-this-sport-will-hurt-him, we would have to say, “No. Choose something else.” But thousands of kids play and don’t get injured. So we roll the dice. But I’m sick to my stomach over this one, and incredibly sad for Owen’s parents.
Please, football lovers, coaches, owners, hear this. Hear his story. NFL, college, high school coaches…make this game safer for our boys. Make is safer so they can love it and so the moms who love them won’t wonder if we’re rolling the dice with our very own boys.
