Walking on the field was the strangest, yet happiest, time of my life. Being back, playing the game, that’s what my mind craved.  Being able to touch the ball, feel the contour of the earth under my feet, look at the unevenly cut grass of the field.  That’s where I felt most comfortable.  But after being gone for so long, it felt almost unnatural, like I forgot what to do.  As soon as I saw my teammates, though, everything was good.  That instinctive feeling you get when everything was perfect rose to my chest.
I walked to them and halfway over I saw my coach, the one I always looked up to, walking towards the team.  I smiled however, when I saw his arm in a sling.  I remembered back to when my mom told me that Dave had broken his hand. 
“Austin, your coach broke his hand yesterday”
“What? How?” I exclaimed.
“He blocked a goal during one of his games and the shooter got the rebound and kicked it again, but Dave’s hand was in the way and he got kicked.  He’s gonna be in a cast for a couple months now.”
“Seriously?  I’m definitely gonna make fun of him now!”  Remembering that time broadened my smile and my head swam with different ways to make fun of him.
By the time Dave got to us it was time for us to start tryouts so we all ran out onto the field to start our warm ups.  Being back in the game felt amazing, hanging out with all my friends and having a great time, even though it was tryouts.  Something that should have been taken serious.  But none of us did because we all knew we would make it, there wasn't enough boys there to give us any competition.
Our tryouts consisted of running, shooting, passing, skill drills, and scrimmaging.  Scrimmaging was very fun, messing around with all the guys and doing random tricks to see who was the best.  Due to previous injuries me and Tyler were out for a little bit nursing our wounds.  Tyler with his shin splints and I with my healing sprained ankle.  We were sitting there talking when he brought up Dave.
“Do you know how he broke his hand?” he asked.
“Yeah, didn’t he get kicked?”
“No...he um...actually punched a pole….” Tyler giggled with a little half smile on his face.
“What?  No he didn’t”
“Yes he did, ask him.  Hey Dave! Come here!”
“How do you know this?”
“I heard him talking to Dillon about it”
“What do you want Tyler?” Dave asked in his sarcastic tone he always uses.
“Tell Austin how you broke your hand”
“Ah no….I’m good” Dave said, and the look he gave Tyler could have turned most anyone to stone.  But not Tyler, he was too busy laughing to notice.  “Wait.  You already told him didn’t you?” he asked accusingly.
“Yeah he did” I laughed. “So tell me the story”
“Don’t tell anybody though…I’ll get so much cr*p for it” Dave pleaded.
“Don’t worry Coach, you can trust me…” I said with the slightest hint of a smirk on my face. I could see in his eyes, he didn’t believe me one bit, which is correct, I told almost everyone I knew.
“Yeah sure….” he sighed.  “So I was playing my game two weeks ago with my team.  The forward on the other team got the ball and ran towards me.  He beat my defender and sprinted down the field.  He shot the ball and I dove to the left blocking his shot.  But the rebound went right back to him and he kicked again.  Well I dove for it again and it nicked my fingers and rolled towards the post.  It hit the post and had a spin on it that made the ball roll in.  Well as you can imagine I got pretty pissed.  I got up and um….I punched the pole.”
I sat there, dumbfounded.  How could he be so stupid?  I thought he was smart!
“Word of advice for you two….don’t punch a pole….it hurts... bad.”
“No really Dave.  I would have never thought” Tyler said shaking his head.  “Finish the story”
“So I walked off the field and my girlfriend walked over to me and said ‘You broke your hand didn’t you?’ and I was like yeah...I think so.  So I went to the doctor and he’s messing around with my hand figuring out where I broke it and everything.  I ask him,
‘Can’t you give me a numbing shot?  This hurts really bad.’
And He said ‘No sorry, where your hand is broken I can’t get the numbing shot in there.’
‘Alright fine.’
“So he is about to set my hand, and mind you at this point I’m basically passed out from the pain, and the doctor says, ‘Yeah, I lied about the numbing shot, I don’t give them to dumbasses who punch things’ and he pushed down really hard and then I passed out.”
“He seriously did that??”  I asked.
“Yeah he did, and it freaking hurt.”
“God, I can’t believe you punched the goal post!” I said.
“Don’t tell people”
“Oh I’m gonna tell everyone Dave! Everyone!”
“You know, I probably wouldn’t have told anybody if you hadn’t lied about it...but now, everyone on the team will know.”  Now this is a pretty hollow threat seeing as though Tyler was going to tell everyone also.  But seeing Dave squirm like that made my day.
Thinking back, this was a pretty small incident but for some reason it has stuck with me.  The fact that he lied about something this small, and it ended up blowing up in his face.  This incident backs a saying that I know of, it’s by John Gotti, “I never lie because I don’t fear anyone.  You only lie if you’re afraid.”  This quote makes sense of this situation.  Dave was scared of what people were going to say when they found out what happened.  So he told this lie to try and keep people from finding out the real reason.  In my opinion this was a cowardly move, lying to people, and it taught me that it’s not right to lie and it will come back around and get you unexpectedly.  It’s called karma, and karma hit my coach like a rock.  I’ve learned that lying will get you nowhere in life except on peoples list to not trust.  And when someone can’t trust you, you won’t be able to trust them.  They’ll treat you just how you treated them.  In a way, this incident was good because it helped me to learn what the difference between right and wrong is.  I don’t respect my coach any less because of this, in fact I respect him more, because he taught me a good life lesson that not many people use.