The day my life changed

In life, there are days and instances that you just don't forget. For some, it's the day you meet the one, the day you get married, the first time your child cries or the day you are baptized.
I have yet to experience most of these, but there is one defining moment that I will never forget. It happened when I was five years old. I was standing in my dad's truckbed with my brother, wearing a Duke sweatshirt. My brother is a huge Duke fan, and growing up, as must younger brothers do, I always wanted to be just like him. So I was a Duke fan, too.
Anyway, my uncle Johnny (the biggest Carolina fan I know) walks up, said, "Boy, what are you wearing!" I didn't know what to say, but I knew in that minute that my big brother, my hero, was wrong.
Johnny jerked me back into reality that day, and pulled me from the forces of evil that is dark blue over to good. From that day on, I was and still am a Tar Heel.

I sat on the couch with him as Chris Webber called time out in 1993. I watched us recover from a 17-point deficit in the Peach Bowl on that same couch just months before, as well as countless Duke games. He took me to my first UNC football game (versus UTEP, when we sat in the bleachers and ate peanuts all game) and first basketball game (a blue-white scrimmage when I was 7.)
I wish I could say that I went to UNC because it had a great Journalism program (which it does) or that it is one of the top public schools in the country (which it is) or I was thnking ahead to my career and knew a degree from UNC would help me somewhere (I'm still waiting for that day, by the way). But no, the truth is I went to Carolina all because of that day. Because of the sports teams.
If my uncle had not made me a Carolina fan, I never would have aspired to go there and wouldn't be here writing this today. Basically, I went there so he and I could go to basketball games together, along with my dad, for free. And boy did we ever go. I went to UNC during the "8-20" as we call it, the year Jason Capel and Kris Lang almost destroyed a tradition it took Dean Smith 30 years to make, and me, daddy and Johnny went like 10 games that year together. Free tickets were very easy to come by.
Johnny and daddy moved me into every dorm room and off-campus apartment I ever had. I went to N.C. State for a semester before being accepted for transfer to Carolina, and the day I moved into the dorm Johnny wore a Carolina sweatshirt (he told me all day, "Jonboy, some things never change, and being a Carolina fan is one of them. You remember that when you are over here in all this red.")
He also taught me how to play poker on the hood of his Monte Carlo during a rain delay at a race a North Wilkesboro when I was 9. He taught me about women, and took me on what to this day is the only hunting trip I have ever been on. We didn't shoot anything. It was cold and rainy and I slept a lot.
He is like a second father to me in many ways. But today, as I write this, he is undergoing surgery to remove part of his colon because of a large tumor his doctor found on a recent exam. And I am worried.
I called him last night, wanting to know how he was feeling before the surgery. Perhaps not really wanting get to emotional, both our thoughts quickly turned to Carolina basketball and the Yankees and racing.
Women often don't get men's love of sports. It's stupid to them. But to us, it's a way to bond, much like the native Americans elders bonded with the young over the hunt. I learned more about being a man from Johnny and my dad while watching sports than anything else.
I just hope, one day soon, I'll get to watch just one more game with them at the Dean Dome.