There are some poor people out there. It really sucks to be poor. I have to admit that I have been amazingly poor before.When I was a student assistant coach 30 years ago, I remember writing in my diary to never, ever forget how poor I was at the time. I dated girls just to get food and beer. Shallow, I know. But this one girl would bring me a sub sandwich (hoagie) every night, with a 6 pack of Coors Light. I liked her very much. She was nuts, but so was I. It was a perfect match. Man, I have some stories from those days, but I have to put them into a fiction book to protect the innocent. My buddy Larry told me one time, "You are always an inch away from being in jail." He exaggerates. But I was poor. I used to wear winter jackets into supermarkets and slide dip cans up the sleeves. I ate a lot of hot dogs with chili on them, because they were 4 hot dogs for a dollar. I loaded them up.
The most that I made as a graduate assistant coach with 4 years experience as a strength and defensive line coach and being in charge of all the cutting and painting the practice and game fields was $520.00 a month. I'd buy a Penthouse and a 12 pack of cheap beer after I'd get paid. Every time. That was my treat to myself. Then I'd buy a few groceries, like pasta and bagels and tuna and pay rent and phone and water and electricity. That was it. Everything was gone then. I'd sneak in the cafeteria. I delivered pizzas. I cleared land. I depended on the kindness of women. And my friends who were married always bought the beer. They were on WIC, which is food stamps for milk and bread and cheese. My one coaching buddy was on it. Married, making minimum wage just to coach. He's now a wining head coach at a Division 2 school and has been for years. We loved it so much. We all loved it so much. Coaching is like a sickness, sometimes. We would do anything to coach. The funny thing is that if you ask us all if we were happy, we would all say yes. You appreciated things.
Not sure what the moral is here. Maybe it's that when you work like we worked for so little money for so long that it really shows how much you loved something.
