I remember one time in 10th grade telling a friend that I had never broken a bone or gotten stitches. Don’t ever say you’ve never broken a bone. It’s bad luck. I don’t really even believe in luck—good or bad—or karma or anything like that, but the timing of my comment proved awfully suspicious.

During the middle of the fall of my sophomore year, I broke my ankle at football practice. The team suffered greatly for it, let me tell you. That one game late in the season when we were down about 60 to Puckett—I might have entered the game a play or two in that one. The broken ankle proved to be the end of my less-than-promising football career. Oh, the ankle injury wasn’t horrific or anything like that. Having never played football before that year, though, I had signifi...

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