I’m crying, when my mom takes my face into her hands and says, “Everything happens for a reason, son.” I’d just been cut from 
my 8th-grade volleyball team.

I was team captain, and my friends asked me to find out 
when the coach would make final cuts. She cut me for asking.

Suddenly with nothing to do after school, I went to watch my little 
brother play the U.S. version of football, entirely unpopular in the 
small town where I was growing up in Canada. A few practices later, 
the coach asked me to play, and it became a sport I did each year.

Where I come from, the most likely path is working 
as a “Rig Pig,” in the oil fields.