Could it be the goat?
08/5/2010Not long ago I was lamenting to a friend some of my doubts and fears. The usual doubts and fears of a self absorbed, image conscious young communicator, things like “I don’t have anything to say.” “Why do I even try to write or preach?” “I’ve got nothing compelling to offer the world.”
“That’s not the Brad Nelson I know,” he replied.
And it stopped me short like a slap to the face.
“The Brad Nelson I know is tenacious and never stops. He overwhelms things with determination. He keeps at it. And besides, you do have stuff to say.”
It was such a gift and a much needed reminder. And it was true. For as long as I can remember that was how I operated. As a soccer player I had decent talent, but what I lacked in talent I made up for in effort. There were plenty of guys more talented than I, but I breezed by them by putting in the time before practice or after. In high school, I’d spend hours in the side yard perfecting my kick or juggling. I didn’t have a big frame, hadn’t even lifted a weight until college in fact. Once in college I somehow always ended up playing opposite a huge Nigerian forward or a ridiculously large, ill-tempered Swede. Their size never deterred me. I went at them fearlessly.
Now that I’m a father, I am seeing the same tenacity in my daughter. She fears nothing, and one of the gifts I am most excited to give her as a father is the periodic and timely reminder of the truth of who she has been all along: Fearless.
Where did the fearlessness come from? Was it innate, planted in us from the day we were born-something related to God’s “I knew you before you were born and I knit you together in your mother’s womb?” Or was it learned? Did we simply adapt to a large world because we Nelson’s tend to have smaller frames?
Thinking about all of this reminded me of an experience I had as a five year old. Our family had gone to visit my mother’s parents on their farm in Oklahoma. The farm was a magical place, hidden in the Ozark Mountains by endless pine trees and almost no hint of society. There were cows, horses, chickens, and goats. There was also no shortage of cow-shit, horse-shit, chicken-shit, or goat-shit, all words I wasn’t supposed to say.
My father particularly hated the goats. He often tells a story of running out to his car one day only to discover one of the goats on top of the car, walking around on the roof. They’d try to eat the bumper. As a five year old, I liked them. They were small. They weren’t anything like the massive bulls or horses that you thought could trample you at any given moment.
At the time, I was very into Mr. T from the show the A-Team. Why my parents didn’t let me watch the Smurfs but did let me watch the gun toting, violence threatening Mr. T is beyond me. I was always walking around throwing out Mr. T quotes. “Put em’ up chump.”
On this particular day, we were standing near the goat pen when I must have made a Mr. T reference because my father suddenly turned to me and said, “Hey Brad, get in the goat pen and tell that goat to “put em’ up chump.” So I did.
I got in the pen, locked eyes with a goat about twenty yards away and confidently put my dukes up and said, “I pity the fool. Put em’ up chump,” and that son of a bitch put his head down in Hollywood fashion, pawed the dirt three or four times, and got a twenty yard head start and rammed me right in the stomach.
When I fell to the ground it was like there was no more oxygen in Oklahoma. I tried to breathe but nothing was happening, like one of those dreams when you try to run from a bear but your legs don’t work and you wake up just as the Grizzly is taking a swipe at you. It hadn’t occurred to me until just now that all of this happened at the encouragement of my father. Knowing him, I’m sure he felt bad, but I’m also sure he and whoever else was standing there laughed until their abs hurt. After all, this was the same man who would drive around town with my uncle and me as a baby, dropping my infant shorts at intersections then honking the horn while mooning people with me, sticking my bare baby butt cheeks up against the window.
This morning, as I ponder where the fearless tenacity came from, I’m wondering could it be the goat?