Alexander Heying

When I was young, like a toddler, my grandpa bought me a Mickey Mouse toy.

And it was holding a football, and wearing a football uniform, and it even had a helmet.

Although I think the helmet came off.

And I hated Football Mickey.

I would take Football Mickey out of the bottom of the toy pile, where he was always kept, just so I could rail him against the side of my bed.

And when I played pretend with all my stuffed animals, Football Mickey was always the bad guy.

And I hated that expectation that just because I was a boy, I was supposed to like football.

But every year, my grandpa would buy me another football for Christmas and another baseball glove.

And every year, he'd ask me, are you going out for any sports?

I went out for Little League baseball once, but I just sat in the outfield and made daisy chains, so I decided to quit.

And one Christmas in particular, he and my mom got in a yelling match.

He had asked her who my friends were, who I was hanging out with, what I was doing with my time.

And when she told him the truth, that all my friends were girls and that I preferred piano over baseball, he just lost it.

I can still, like, place myself in relation to the dinner table so vividly, as my grandpa yelled from one side and my mom defended me from the other.

And she's always felt undervalued by her dad, so that didn't help either.

Well, I lost track of Football Mickey years ago, which would have been super sad had it been any other stuffed toy.

Like one time I came home and I found my favorite toy rabbit hanging in shreds from the jowls of the family dog.

God damn it, Billy.

And I was like immobilized by grief for the rest of the night.

But no tears were shed over Football Mickey.