David McElroy

Were you on my website early Sunday morning — around 3:30 a.m. central time? Probably not, but if you happened to be, you would be represented on one of the dots on this map in my software showing the general location of my readers at any given moment. (The bigger the dot, the more readers from that city in that moment.)

It’s pretty cool, but it’s not especially useful. There used to be a different tool that could show me detailed information about exactly where readers were coming from during a full day (or any other period), but that tool is no longer available.

Today, I have only the vaguest notion of where my readers are coming from — and I’d really like to understand more. Would you be willing to help me? It would take only a few seconds of your time.

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When I was growing up, I was often ambivalent about sports. By the time I was a student at the University of Alabama, I was borderline-hostile about the sports that were so important to my fellow students and many of the people around me.

I was in Tuscaloosa to learn, not to waste my time with something so brain-dead. That was what I told myself. I thought I was too good — too academically pure or some such — to care about a bunch of athletes pushing themselves around in the grass.

It wasn’t until about 10 years after I left college that I started to care about football and basketball. But let’s reword that. I didn’t suddenly discover that I loved these games or the intricacies of how they were played.

I discovered that I loved my university. Quite unexpectedly, I found that keeping up with these “childish games” gave me something I craved.

It wasn’t about football. It was a sense that I was a part of something much larger than myself.

When I watched the Alabama Crimson Tide — on the field or on the court — I realized that I wasn’t just rooting for athletes. I was experiencing pride.

This was my university. This was part of who I was.

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I keep being reminded that I don’t fit in this place.

That thought is always in the back of my mind. I’ve felt it for most of my life. But there are certain days when it seems as though the reminders are everywhere. After another one of those days Thursday, I am feeling incredibly alone tonight.

Again.

Nothing bad happened to me Thursday. Nobody rejected me or insulted me. I didn’t have an argument with anybody. Instead, I had two perfectly friendly conversations with people I’ve known for years, but I walked away from them feeling strangely depressed and isolated.

The specifics of the conversations don’t matter. In fact, explaining them would probably sidetrack what I have to say onto different issues. Neither person said anything shocking or offensive. They both simply expressed perfectly ordinary assumptions about life and the world around us — assumptions which wouldn’t have seemed noteworthy to most people.

But those two conversations jerked me back to reality. They reminded me that I’m the alien here.

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