NewMexiKen spent much of the day reading Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side. While I often recommend books, I hate to rave about them because I realize we have different interests, tastes and sensibilities. But if you have any interest whatsoever in NFL or college football or American socio-economic conditions, I urge you to get this wonderful work of nonfiction literature. Perhaps it even surpasses a need for those interests.
The Blind Side is the story of Michael Oher, a black virtually abandoned child from the worst slums of Memphis who gets admitted to a Christian prep school, adopted by a wealthy white family, and ends up at Ole Miss (where he’s currently in his second season.) Along the way, Lewis tells how the left offensive tackle became the second most valued position in pro football — because the left tackle protects the blind side of a right-handed quarterback.
We went to dinner again, but this time my wife, Tabitha, came along. When we got around to the subject of Michael Oher it took Sean [Oher’s guardian] about ten minutes to get her laughing, twenty to get her crying, and thirty to ruin the meal. But it was worth it, because in the car on the way home she said, “I don’t understand why you are writing about anything else.”
Three amusing, yet insightful passages:
“Where are his parents?” asked [prep school football coach Hugh] Freeze. He felt a twinge of interest. If a man who weighed 400 pounds was referring to someone else as “Big Mike” he’d like to see the size of that someone else.
She didn’t know a lot of gay people. White Evangelical Christian Memphis—which is to say most of East Memphis—wasn’t really designed to make black people feel comfortable in it, but if you had a choice of being black in East Memphis, or being gay in East Memphis, you’d think at least twice about it.
Of course, football players weren’t the only Ole Miss students majoring in Criminal Justice. But when the Criminal Justice program took the field trip to Parchman Farm—aka the Mississippi State Penitentiary—the football players were the only students with friends on the inside.
A fascinating, informative and moving story.