Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 195

“I was the captain of my soccer team in college. I was the...

“I was the captain of my soccer team in college. I was the goalie. I’d have loved to play professionally but the timing wasn’t right. Major League Soccer didn’t start until I was 28. I did everything I could to keep playing though. I joined a Caribbean league in the Bronx. A Colombian league in Queens. I formed my own amateur team and we won ten summer championships in a row. I’m forty-eight now. I’m the oldest guy on the team so it takes a lot of extra work to stay in shape. I’ve had two knee surgeries. My reflexes are still there but the body is just slower to react. Most of the time I can compensate with my experience. I’ve seen everything one million times. I’ll know that ninety percent of the time in a given situation, the player will make a cross, and I can put myself in the best possible position. But the wisdom doesn’t compensate for the physical like it used to. Last year we lost a semifinal game because I was two inches short of a save. I can see the horizon rising.”

“I’m trying to focus on my first year in college while my...

“I’m trying to focus on my first year in college while my parents get divorced. They told me when I came home for Thanksgiving break. They’ve been together since they were my age. Dad wanted to be a successful artist. He was always the dreamer. He was the one that played games with me, while Mom was the one that helped me with my homework. I just don’t think that Mom felt she could grow with him anymore. She’d recently gone back to school and gotten a new job. Dad is still hoping that his art will get noticed. She thinks he needs to be realistic. He thinks she lost hope too early. Ever since they decided to separate, I noticed that a light seemed to dim in my dad. But a light seemed to grow in my mom.”

(6/6) “I was institutionalized after the incident. They were...

(6/6) “I was institutionalized after the incident. They were giving me Celexa, Wellbutrin, Ambien to help me sleep, Minipress for nightmares, Sertraline, Klonopin. But none of the medication was really working. Finally they gave me convulsive shock therapy and that has helped some. I do feel better. I’m going to The Digital Film Academy now. I thought I’d try to get back into cinema. Recently I made my first film. It’s about a sergeant who failed at his job and caused another soldier to get injured. When he asks for forgiveness, the soldier asks him to prove his remorse by shooting himself in the leg. He agrees. But then it turns out that the gun isn’t loaded.”

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Jamie’s film: https://vimeo.com/148893064

(5/6) “I didn’t really have time to reflect immediately after...

(5/6) “I didn’t really have time to reflect immediately after the ambush. I just ate dinner and tried to go to sleep because we had another patrol the next day. But I’ve had nightmares ever since. I lie in bed and replay the situation over and over. I wasn’t the leader that I should have been. I failed under pressure and somebody got hurt. I have no confidence left. I can’t take a leadership position of any kind. I tried to stay in the army after I came home from Afghanistan. But one night we were doing a training exercise. Our objective was a forward passage of lines— meaning that two platoons were supposed to pass through each other in the dark. But everything was going wrong. Our platoon leader got lost and I had to take over. Soldiers were all over the place and the mission was failing. I was messing up. It was happening to me all over again and the pressure was too much. So I just ran into a bush and took out my knife and started slashing my wrists as hard and as fast as I could.”

(4/6) “My last tour was in Afghanistan. That was the bad one....

(4/6) “My last tour was in Afghanistan. That was the bad one. One day we were on a foot patrol, and we were using a metal detector to sweep the road for IEDs. I was a staff sergeant but I’d temporarily taken over as platoon sergeant, so this was really the first time I’d been in a position of leadership. We came across a copper wire stretched over the road and traced it back to some explosives. While we waited for the disposal team, we came under fire. It was an ambush. I thought I’d remember my training but instead I just froze. I messed it up. I was supposed to return fire, flank, and keep good radio communication. But all I felt was horror and I froze. I just got pinned down and bullets were kicking up dust around me and I was just waiting to take one in the head and die. All that training and drilling meant nothing. One of my soldiers got hit by an RPG and was severely injured. I was supposed to be the one in charge, but I froze and did nothing. When the firing subsided, we grabbed our injured man and started driving back down the road. I’ll never forget seeing the villagers laughing at us while we drove away.”

(3/6) “I got blown up once. We hit an IED while driving to...

(3/6) “I got blown up once. We hit an IED while driving to pick up another truck that had broken down. The moment it happened, I just remember feeling really angry. The truck rose into the air and my head hit the ceiling and I remember thinking that this was the end and they’d got me. There was a big rush of adrenaline. When everything came to a stop and we realized that we were still alive, it felt awesome. All of us gathered around the truck and began taking pictures. Everyone was smiling and laughing. I didn’t realize until later how much it affected me. I don’t like to drive anymore. If I ever hit a pothole or a speed bump, I panic.”

(2/6) “My first tour was Iraq. I think during training I...

(2/6) “My first tour was Iraq. I think during training I imaged that war would be like the movies. I had zero experience so I was picturing something like Platoon or Full Metal Jacket. But 99% of the time it’s boring and you don’t do anything productive. I was a cavalry scout, so we’d go out in front of the infantry and get an eye on the battlefield. Mainly it involved just sitting at an observation post. The first time I experienced combat, I was actually in a garage helping fix a large truck. We came under indirect fire. I could hear the guns around us and for the first time I realized that the war is real and people are trying to kill us. Honestly, it was pretty cool. It was a huge adrenaline rush. It was the highest I’ve ever felt in my life. It made me feel like my job had been validated.”

(1/6) “I joined the army because I wanted to do something that...

(1/6) “I joined the army because I wanted to do something that mattered. I’d only ever worked at jobs like McDonald’s and Party City. I’d just gotten a degree in cinema from Stony Brook, but I wasn’t sure what to do with that. So I enlisted. The training mostly emphasized patriotism and discipline. Basically your job is to kill people, so I think the goal is just train and drill until everything is second nature and doesn’t require any thinking. Not like you have much opportunity to think about it anyway. You get dropped off in a faraway country and there’s no way back.”

“I work for a plumbing company. You probably...

“I work for a plumbing company. You probably wouldn’t guess by looking at me, but I talk about toilets all day long. I mainly work in sales. But if the toilets are broken, I’ll handle that too. You should see the reaction I get from a group of guys when I tell them that I’m here to fix the toilets.”

“I’ve always liked to do nice things for strangers. I worked in...

“I’ve always liked to do nice things for strangers. I worked in the mail room at my college dorm, and whenever I emailed a package notification, I’d always add a little something extra. Like an awesome shark pic. Or a link to Japanese jazz. Lately I’ve been doing this thing where I buy really weird antique post cards, write poems on them, and mail them to random people I find in the white pages. The first time I sent one, I added a full-page disclaimer because I was worried some old person would think it was from ISIS and call the cops. I basically wrote: ‘Don’t worry. It’s art. Everything’s cool. You won’t be hearing from me again.’”