I recall returning to Poly years later and Coach's asking me to come to practice so he could tell the team how I stuck with football despite a lack of skill (I was no longer merely soft), and how my discipline and persistence should be an example to all.
Today, I have a library of books covering all kinds of topics, and reminding me of when I learned to ride a bike (second grade), how I stuck with track even though I hated it (freshman year), and the year I started to be interested in clothes and hair (fifth grade).
In another photograph from the same day, I also sit under that fountain, but my eyes are wide open and I'm smiling sheepishly, aware of how I stick out, a teenager crouched on the ground, surrounded by medieval art.
When things get tough, how do I stick it out?
While his mopey British rival Morrissey attracted a snide intellectual set with complaints about class and sexual politics in a conservative society, Mr. Smith offered self-pitying lyrics like these from "Homesick": "Oh it was sweet, it was wild, and oh how I trembled stuck in honey/ honey, cling to me so just one more, just one more go inspire in me the desire in me to never go home".
I told some lie about how I was stuck in West Hollywood with a flat tire.
Things like: "I don't believe I can have this thing I want," or "I'm becoming depressed just thinking about how I'm stuck here, when I really want to be over there".
Of course it's easy to look back, on the eve of publication, and express how grateful I am I stuck with it.
Members of his various bands included, on bass, his school friend John Bird, the comic actor, who says of that time: "We sometimes tried to play jazz, though the only chord sequence I ever learnt was How High the Moon, which I stuck to, whatever Pete was playing".
"The misconception people have about me is that I am angry all the time, that I cry all day long, that I wake up and my day consists of how I can stick it to the killer," Goldman says.
Somewhere along the line I'd slip into thinking, "How long can I stick to this?" Diets, despite everything you read on the internet (or hear from your doctor), won't get you any closer to health.
