Memories — By Tommy Purser

I love football and softball in the fall and the winter brings us lots of basketball and wrestling action.
But spring is my busiest time of the year, as spring sports consumes a lot of my time. I don’t get to go to all the games and matches, I can’t spread myself that thin. But I do try to report on our kids’ exploits and I appreciate those coaches who agree with me that giving young athletes exposure and recognition, and giving parents and grandparents things to put in their scrapbooks is important in small town America.
When I was just a pre-teen and teenager, playing baseball, football, basketball and golf, and running on the track, my mother clipped out all the articles in our local paper that mentioned my name and religiously taped them into a scrapbook which I still have to this day.
Some of the articles rekindle memories of my youth, others leave me mystified at their contents because I can’t recall the games they chronicled.
But those articles give me a chance to be young again or to at least remember, however fuzzily, what it was like long ago to be so young.
My mother also kept a basketball scorebook for every game I played during my high school days. I still have that scorebook, too.
Memories. They keep us young. They keep us grounded. They help us remember the “good” times. The days when we were young and invincible. When nothing could hurt us or touch us. Times when we were carefree and threw caution to the wind.
Today, I think about small, insignificant physical things I did when young and I tremble in fear that I should even think about trying those things today.
I may not can do them anymore, but I do remember when I could and did.