Unlike a Picture, a Caption Sometimes Lies

I grew up in Dallas, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw a picture of myself in the yearbook from a Houston high school.

I learned of that picture quite by accident. A guy who lived just down the hall from me in Dorm 14 on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, was looking through his yearbook one night, when he saw what looked like me. The picture was of one of their school’s soccer players, but there I was, captured in my high school soccer glory. My long(er) hair attempting to flow in the wind, my trademark socks pushed down around my ankles, my far-too-large but in-style shorts filling the frame.

There was no doubt about it. I was in another school’s yearbook. But whatever joy I had about that evaporated when I read the caption:

“(So and so)  burns a defender on his way to the goal.”

And I was the defender. The one who got “burned.”

Now there are some moments from my soccer days I have never forgotten. I remember the winning goal I scored against Berkner High School in the playoffs, mainly because their fans were always the ones who yelled “chicken legs” at me whenever we played them. I remember the crowd of students standing along the fence behind the goal, and how they erupted when the ball hit the net, and how I raced along the sideline and pointed to my legs before the jeering fans from Berkner. (Had I thought of it, I would have surely yelled, “How do you like me now?”)

But I also remember some bad moments, like the time when I was playing goalie, and a simple ball came toward me. When I turned to see if it would go wide, it glanced off my leg and into the goal. We lost the game because of my mistake, which is why I’m still trying to forget that moment.

Only I can’t. We tend to remember the glory and the goofs.

I would have probably forgotten that ordinary moment from the game in Houston had it not been immortalized in a rival’s yearbook, as it was just another moment in a string of ordinary moments. But when I stared at that caption, it all came back. Even now, I can rehearse that play any time I want. And it’s been more than thirty-five years.

“(So and so) burns a defender on his way to the goal.”

Only that’s not what happened. I don’t care what the caption proclaims.

I could have written the truth about that moment:  “(So and so) appears to get past a defender, only to have the ball stolen by that unidentified opponent with the svelte legs a mere fraction of a second after this photo was taken.” (Svelte means “slender and elegant.” See, “chicken legs.”)

But I will never get to rewrite the caption. It lives on. It continues to speak of something that didn’t happened. I can never silence its witness, correct its inaccuracy, or provide the context that would give some viewer a completely different (and truer) picture.

I think that’s the moment I realized that sometimes you will be the only one who knows the truth about yourself. About what you said, or did, or the motivations that drove you in some moment.

And while there’s a danger that you can be the last to recognize something within you that you need to discover, only to have another’s words reveal it to you, it also works the other way. Someone’s assessment of you, even when they believe it with all that they are, can make you forget what you really know.

And that’s the truth.