My Touch Football Story Has Been Cut Tragically Short

Redeemer has indoor touch football intramurals. They're going on in the gym this March. When you have a body type like mine and you quit your highly physical job to study, keeping active is incredibly important, and if you're easily bored the way I am, sometimes the treadmill just doesn't do it for you. Competitive touch football can.

The league is known as the ReDeemA Rough Royals Indoor Touch Football League. Unfortunately that's not a typo, and the part of me that wants to eventually make a living with my writing is struggling not to lambast these people for spelling Redeemer like that, but I'm going to let it slide for the time being, because the games are fun and the jocks that run them are really nice. The word jock is a little bit antiquated, but entirely applicable in the case of one of the guys running these games, Josh Erikson. Josh is a jock, through and through. I almost never see him outside of the weight room, and I'm relatively certain that he's some sort of jock vampire and that if he ever does leave, he'll melt.

I've gotten along with Erikson and his jock friends the way I never did with the jocks in high school. I'm pretty sure it has at least something to do with the fact that I'm now dealing with grownups, but I think there's more to it than that. We make a big deal out of social mobility on this blog, and while I haven't had the on-campus familial experiences that Shailene has, I have noticed that Redeemer's student body doesn't demand that everybody belong to one and only one of those archetypal social groups the way my old high school did. This place doesn’t run on stereotypes, and so I don’t have to be a jock to enjoy touch football. And I do very much enjoy touch football. Or…I did.

The human foot is a delicate, beautiful creation of Our Lord. It has 26 bones in it. It also has 33 joints, 107 ligaments, and 19 muscles. I mention this because on Monday, I was at a Tae Kwon Do Club meeting doing some light sparring, when my delicate and beautiful creation of Our Lord collided with the rudimentary mass of unrelenting bone and cartilage that was my opponent’s elbow. As one might guess, it was not the elbow that came out of this encounter worse for the wear. I’m pretty sure at least one of those 26 bones in my foot is broken, and sadly, this may mean that my touch football career is over. It was fun while it lasted.

Join the Family

In today’s culture, many people have a hard time defining family. Traditionalists would say that a family consists of a husband, wife, and children. A more modern definition considers a family to be a group of people who live together and care for each other. Now, I’m not about to attempt to create the most accurate definition of a family, but I do want to share with you the family life at Redeemer. Perhaps one of the things you are looking forward the most about being at university is living on your own and being independent from the rest of your family. Well, I hate to break it to you, but when you join the Redeemer community, you agree to belong to the Redeemer family.

Now what do I mean by the “Redeemer family”? I mean a group of young adults who care about one another whether they know them or not. Perhaps some examples will help demonstrate what I am trying to say. First, I will tell you a story about my dorm. One night, one of my dormies, who had gone to work in the library, went missing. She had apparently left the library and told someone that she would be back in a few minutes, but it had been two hours since she had left and she had left all of her stuff in the library. As soon as we heard that our dorm sister was missing, we dropped what we were doing to go look for her. Even the people who were just visiting our dorm joined the search party. Eventually, we found her, talking to a friend in the art gallery. Although this story is slightly embarrassing on our part, it gives you a good idea of how willing Redeemer people are to drop everything when someone is in trouble (whether it be real trouble or not).

Another example of the Redeemer family occurred this weekend when we decided to go shopping. Unfortunately, it was raining so by the time we reached the bus stop we were soaked. When we got on the bus, we were greeted by other Redeemer students who were also going to the mall. As one of my friend’s was complaining about his wet socks, another Redeemer student on the bus handed him a dry pair of socks. Even though we didn’t really know those students, they were still willing to help us be more comfortable.

I don’t want you to think that the Redeemer family is so caring to the point of suffocation. Just know that when you need someone to talk to or someone to help you, you’ll always find a willing hand. There is a place for everyone in the Redeemer family, which is why this year’s slogan is “I belong”. I encourage you to find your place in the Redeemer family and experience what Christian fellowship among young adults can do for you.