Fantasy Land

People never like to be told they're wrong.

An old adage says something like "never discuss sex, religion, or politics" and I tend to agree with that. If you were raised Republican, we can have a discussion, even a debate, about taxes. In the end, neither one of us is going to go home and say "you know what, they made a good point. I never thought of it that way."

I didn't attend Penn State, never saw a football game, visited campus twice. It was nice, but I wasn't crying when I left. Everyone that I know who has graduated from there is a genuinely good person from what I can see.

That's why this situation bothers me so much.

Since last November I've been trying to understand why people were fighting to defend someone who conspired to hide the rape of children.

I didn't understand why people couldn't detach themselves from the situation and their emotions.

Then last night I thought about it, nobody likes to be told they're wrong. A Catholic believes in God, a car buyer always got a great deal, an addict can stop whenever they want. Joe Paterno did things they way they were supposed to be done.

It hurts your soul to have a philosophical belief challenged. It hurts to admit you were wrong, your parents were wrong, their parents were wrong. In any situation.

In 1995 I was 14 years old and reported to training camp as a ball boy for the Philadelphia Eagles. It was the only job I had ever wanted since I was 4 and my dad brought the ball boys to the Glenolden Swim Club.

Before I left for camp I remember my dad saying to me, "don't be afraid of those guys [the players], they're just normal people with a different job."

I thought about that the first time I saw Randall Cunningham that summer. For that minute when he stood at the elevator at Schmidt Hall, waiting for a door to open and slowly raise him three floors to a room that had been used to house an 18-year-old college freshmen just a month earlier, I was starstruck. He was god.

Then it clicked, he's just a guy. A guy with more money than I could have ever imagined, a cooler job than I would ever land, and gold tipped shoe laces that would never touch my feet.

But at the end of the day, we were exactly the same. Just people trying to do our job the best we could.

I've remembered and repeated that line a lot over the last 17 years.

No one entered this world differently than you or I. Let's stop acting like athletes and television stars are better people than us, and maybe we won't fall so hard when we learn they're human. Just like us.