A Quote by Jennifer Welter
I knew I had to be in football, but I didn't know what that looked like. I made a pact with myself that I would stand up for that challenge. I had no idea how big that would be. There were no jobs for women in football, and my work was elsewhere, but I kept with my passion, and thankfully, it ended up opening up doors.
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People were standing up everywhere shouting, "This is me! This is me!" Every time you looked at them they stood up and told you who they were, and the truth of it was that they had no more idea who or what they were than he had. They believed their flashing signs, too. They ought to be standing up and shouting, "This isn't me! This isn't me!" They would if they had any decency. "This isn't me!" Then you might know how to proceed through the flashing bullshit of this world.
My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up. I made a pledge to myself that I would get up and emerge from this debacle better for having gone through it. I would live up to the expectation I had for myself. I would be the kind of man I wanted to be.
I grew up on the rough side of the tracks. If you looked like you were soft, you would be fodder for the wolves. I came up in my neighbourhood like, 'I'm just gonna be me,' and all the thugs just said, 'It's OK, he's special.' They knew I had the talent with the rhymes, so they kept me around.
There were doors that looked like large keyholes, others that resembled the entrances to caves, there were golden doors, some were padded and some were studded with nails, some were paper-thin and others as thick as the doors of treasure houses; there was one that looked like a giant's mouth and another that had to be opened like a drawbridge, one that suggested a big ear and one that was made of gingerbread, one that was shaped like an oven door, and one that had to be unbuttoned.
I grew up in Africa, in Nigeria. I never knew, I never had any reasonable encounter with football. I saw football on Sky News. I thought there were people dressed like extraterrestrials, you know, like they were going to Mars or something, headgears and shoulder pads. And I wondered why, as a child, why did they have to dress that way.
A friend got attacked outside a nightclub just for being deaf. I stuck up for him but ended up getting in a bit of a trouble myself. I played with a tag at Stocksbridge. I had a little curfew. Luckily, it didn't stop me playing football. Being put on a tag, I could have lost playing football again.
I guess I always had made some assumptions about what it would be like to work in a tech company, and some were right, and some were wrong. I had a lot of, looking back on it, now naive ideas about how companies build their brands, and a lot of those notions I ended up realizing were kind of wrong.
Without defeats, how do you really know who the hell you are? If you never had to stand up to something - to get up, to be knocked down, and to get up again - life can walk over you wearing football cleats. But each time you do get up, you're bigger, taller, finer, more beautiful, more kind, more understanding, more loving. Each time you get up, you're more inclusive. More people can stand under your umbrella.
I am the Rangers manager who ended up in a witness stand in the high court, thinking: 'Is this what it's come to?' There were people involved at our football club who had no right to be there and should never have been near the place.
I had all these desperate feelings. I kept thinking, How will I ever play football again if I can't even get out of this bed? I was an invalid. Football had given me everything: identity, money, confidence, friendships. I wondered what kind of man I would be without it.
When I first got to college, in my mind, I was going to end up playing professional football. When I tell people this story, they always end up laughing, and I chuckle about it at my own expense. I was a big fan of American football; I played in high school, and I ended up earning the opportunity to play in college.
I can work as a writer, but I wanted to do stand-up. And I knew I could, at worst, work as a stand-up. And I like to travel, and I knew I wanted to do an hour special, so in order to get ready for that, I had to hit the road.
If I had maintained my athletic fantasy, I probably would have ended up as a fat football coach somewhere in central Pennsylvania. I'm really glad I'm starring in a Broadway musical instead.
Football is something I would never give up on, whether I ended up playing professional or in a Sunday league team.
My parents preached so much about Christianity and my mother thinks Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to the world - which he is - and God found a way of making examples for me. Like, just growing up, bullets would hit my partner but not me and I'd be right there. Or my Dad had a thing where he would make me play for the sorry team during football and make me go up against all my friends. It built a certain kind of character and a humble factor into me because I knew I had to work for it. And then to be able to beat them or be just as successful at so many things.
I had no idea how difficult Sondheim's music would be. All through the rehearsals, I kept flubbing. There were so many tempo changes. I could never get through the opening number without any mistakes. One day, I went up to Hal Prince and offered to leave the show. He laughed it off. He said, 'Don't be silly. That's why we have tryouts.'
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