look-a-like

i am working on a real entry that i will post later this week, but the other day something happened to me that has happened on average of once-a-week for the past year and a half.

in the course of each week, i go to a bunch of schools to visit my clients.

if you've ever met me, you know that i'm tall, handsome and hairy. when i walk into a school, kids look at me and whisper/shout things like, "you're tall," along with gasps and laughter...

you know how white people are often accused of thinking all black people look the same? i'm thinking of the seinfeld episode where george thinks that his boss looks like sugar ray leonard and invites the exterminator to lunch with him so that his boss will see that george is in fact, not racist, and has black friends.

well, if such stereotypes, generalizations and oversights happen against black people by white people on a regular basis, then i am a victim of this phenomenon reversed.

on numerous occasions i get this question/comment: "i think that's carson palmer," or "hey, are you carson palmer?"

do i look like carson palmer? not really. i'm tall, handsome and have stubble and/or a beard. if that makes me a carson palmer look-a-like, then so-be-it.

i have, on one occasion, actually signed carson's name on a spiral-bound notebook. if this offends you carson, then i am sorry. it was all in good fun.

thinking about this leads me back to the one major regret/"what if" of my life:

when i was growing up, my parents would never let me play football. the pee-wee league played it's games on sunday mornings and it was impermissible that i would be allowed to join a team, and thus miss church every week during the season. every year the sign-ups were announce. every year i begged my parents to let me play. every year was rebuffed with extreme prejudice. every year i threw the football to my goat in the back yard, dreaming about what it would be like to play football.

by the time i got into high school, and games were played under the 'friday night lights' i was too far behind to catch up, and then my mom played the whole, "football is too violent. you'll get hurt. join the boy scouts instead..." card. yeah mom, like boy scouts is any sort of replacement for football. thanks for that.

i've always wondered what it would have been like to play football. i never got to suit up in pads. i've never hit somebody with brute force, or been crushed by a defender as i tried to muscle my way for the first down.

a few years back, when i lived in orange county, my friends brian, ethan, taylor and eric tried to develop a plan where i would be trained and send in a video to some college in order to become the starting quarterback. if i would have known that it is so easy to mistake me for carson palmer, i might have actually went through with the whole plan.

but it never happened. we would sit around, drink some beers, and joke about the drills i would complete and how i would work on my spiral and what it would be like when i became a big star and have my own entourage. but it never came to pass.

and think about it. i would have still ended up here. i was just outside of LA, so i would have gone to USC and taken carson palmer's starting gig, and then the bengals would have picked me first overall in the 2003 draft, and i would have met heidi at some charity event for kids without shoes, we would fall in love and get hitched and life would be pretty similar, except we'd be rich.

i guess it was never meant to be. and i'm perfectly ok with that, but i can't help but wonder, "what if..."