In the past few years, comedian Gary Gulman started opening up about his depression. But he says he might not be talking about mental illness — might not even be a stand-up comic — if it weren't for sports. (OnlyAGameNPR)
"And I got free lunch, which was humiliating," Gary says."They would take the money from all the kids who had money for lunch. And then it was like, 'All right, now the free lunch kids — why don't you zeros line up? And we'll hand you these fluorescent pink tickets' — as if the overalls and bare feet didn't give away your level of wealth."
Gary ended up falling in love with basketball, and he quickly stood out. Gary's 6-foot-6 — and he could jump higher and run faster than most of the other boys."They were just tough boys," Gary says."There was an expression I remember growing up that my father would use to describe — and it was always other peoples' kids: 'Oh, he's all boy. That one's all boy.' And it was never used to describe me. Because I was really soft.
"And I hadn't thought about how I was going to pay for college. And they, with one phone call, had put all that anxiety aside because I believed them. They were so convincing."When the season began, Gary still didn't really know how to block, so he only played offense in passing situations. The defense knew what was coming, but Gary was so much bigger that he couldn't be stopped.
For one, there was his scholarship. And Gary didn't admit it to Dr. McGuinness, but he still felt like he needed to be a star athlete to be a worthy person."I think up to that time in my life I had been depressed most of my life and I just thought it was how everybody lived — that everybody struggled just to get out of bed every day, and everyone felt that they were a lousy person unless they achieved great things," Gary says.
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