When I was a freshman in high school, I had a football coach who was intense, very intense. His intensity was especially evident with players he didn’t like, players like me. At least that was true of my freshman year which was a proving ground in his mind. Thankfully, I survived Coach’s wrath that first season which led to an improved status for my future years of high school. 

Coach had a mustache that resembled the look of a Viking on a conquest. He was the kind of man who during his tour-of-duty in Vietnam spent his free time killing water buffalos with his .50 caliber machine gun. In the strangest of contrasts, school administrators assigned him to teach driver’s education.  I will always remember how he greeted the class as he looked out at us on that first day, “Well,” he scoffed, “This isn’t the freshman class at Harvard.” That was certainly an accurate assessment.