looked at the list. There was Carestam, up toward the top of the alphabetized page. But when we got to the S’s, there was no Samuelsson. I looked again. Not there. My brain refused to process what was clearly visible in front of me. For a few moments, I just kept looking at the list, reciting the alphabet in my head. Q, R, S, T.
Where was I?
My name wasn’t there, no matter how many times I looked. It sounds melodramatic to say it, but I simply couldn’t imagine that there was no place for me on this team, with my friends, in the game that was my world.
I slammed my fist into the bulletin board, as Mats stood by, toeing the ground with a tip of one sneaker, averting his eyes.
“Javla skit!”
I screamed.
“Skit! Skit! Skit!”
Holy shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
The office door opened and Coach Lars stuck his head out to see what was up.
“Come inside, Samuelsson,” he said. “Carestam, wait here.”
I followed Lars into his office and he shut the door behind us. I sank into the chair across from his desk, which was scattered with the playbooks and lineups and photocopied schedules that represented all that had been taken away from me. I took deep breaths and tried to keep my hands from trembling.
“Marcus,” he said. “I know this is disappointing. You’re a great player, but you’re too small. The other sixteen-year-olds outweigh you by forty or fifty pounds, some of them more. You should keep playing, but it can’t be with us. Sorry.”
It was the first time in my life that I had ever been fired, and I didn’t even see it coming. I worked hard, I didn’t flaunt the rules, I was diligent, I was disciplined, I was
good
. I was also out. Cut from the team. The only career path I’d ever considered for myself was now closed.
Although I would continue to play soccer in a smaller, lesser league, even working with a special coach to bridge that size and strength gap, eventually I had to let the dream go. And when I did, food entered my life fully.
Maybe one of the reasons that I come on so hard in the food game is that I’ve been cut once before. I know what it’s like to see your name on the list year after year, and I know the heartbreak that comes the day you look up and your name is no longer on that list. Even now, all these years after GAIS let me go, I sometimes think of myself more as a failed soccer player than as an accomplished chef.
SEVEN ALL CHIPS ON FOOD
W ITH A SOCCER CAREER OFF THE TABLE , I DECIDED TO APPLY TO A VOCATIONAL high school. Sweden’s school system was compulsory only until ninth grade, at which point many kids went on to two or three more years of gymnasium, specialized high schools meant to equip you for either a job or university.
As I considered my options, I began to play around with the idea of being a chef. Cooking was something I loved and was good at. At fifteen, I applied for and was accepted into Ester Mosesson, a school where creative types from all over Gburg studied subjects like cooking, fashion, and graphic design. It was like a
Saturday Night Live
sketch of a European high school of the performing arts: Instead ofbursting into song or dancing on the cafeteria tables, students at Mosesson sketched intensely and learned to make flawless soufflés.
I had never excelled in academics the way my father had, so here was a curriculum that I could finally get excited about. My only formal classes were in Swedish and English—I loved languages, so that was always fun. There was a mandatory PE program, which consisted mostly of easy soccer scrimmages—again, fun. The rest of the day was spent cooking. By this point, I’d been around food and cooking for so long that I couldn’t remember
not
knowing my way around a kitchen. I walked into the class feeling more than confident. On the third day, one of our instructors was running through basic knife skills for prepping vegetables. “Soon enough,” he promised, “you’ll dream about chopping onions.”
The
Where was I?
My name wasn’t there, no matter how many times I looked. It sounds melodramatic to say it, but I simply couldn’t imagine that there was no place for me on this team, with my friends, in the game that was my world.
I slammed my fist into the bulletin board, as Mats stood by, toeing the ground with a tip of one sneaker, averting his eyes.
“Javla skit!”
I screamed.
“Skit! Skit! Skit!”
Holy shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
The office door opened and Coach Lars stuck his head out to see what was up.
“Come inside, Samuelsson,” he said. “Carestam, wait here.”
I followed Lars into his office and he shut the door behind us. I sank into the chair across from his desk, which was scattered with the playbooks and lineups and photocopied schedules that represented all that had been taken away from me. I took deep breaths and tried to keep my hands from trembling.
“Marcus,” he said. “I know this is disappointing. You’re a great player, but you’re too small. The other sixteen-year-olds outweigh you by forty or fifty pounds, some of them more. You should keep playing, but it can’t be with us. Sorry.”
It was the first time in my life that I had ever been fired, and I didn’t even see it coming. I worked hard, I didn’t flaunt the rules, I was diligent, I was disciplined, I was
good
. I was also out. Cut from the team. The only career path I’d ever considered for myself was now closed.
Although I would continue to play soccer in a smaller, lesser league, even working with a special coach to bridge that size and strength gap, eventually I had to let the dream go. And when I did, food entered my life fully.
Maybe one of the reasons that I come on so hard in the food game is that I’ve been cut once before. I know what it’s like to see your name on the list year after year, and I know the heartbreak that comes the day you look up and your name is no longer on that list. Even now, all these years after GAIS let me go, I sometimes think of myself more as a failed soccer player than as an accomplished chef.
SEVEN ALL CHIPS ON FOOD
W ITH A SOCCER CAREER OFF THE TABLE , I DECIDED TO APPLY TO A VOCATIONAL high school. Sweden’s school system was compulsory only until ninth grade, at which point many kids went on to two or three more years of gymnasium, specialized high schools meant to equip you for either a job or university.
As I considered my options, I began to play around with the idea of being a chef. Cooking was something I loved and was good at. At fifteen, I applied for and was accepted into Ester Mosesson, a school where creative types from all over Gburg studied subjects like cooking, fashion, and graphic design. It was like a
Saturday Night Live
sketch of a European high school of the performing arts: Instead ofbursting into song or dancing on the cafeteria tables, students at Mosesson sketched intensely and learned to make flawless soufflés.
I had never excelled in academics the way my father had, so here was a curriculum that I could finally get excited about. My only formal classes were in Swedish and English—I loved languages, so that was always fun. There was a mandatory PE program, which consisted mostly of easy soccer scrimmages—again, fun. The rest of the day was spent cooking. By this point, I’d been around food and cooking for so long that I couldn’t remember
not
knowing my way around a kitchen. I walked into the class feeling more than confident. On the third day, one of our instructors was running through basic knife skills for prepping vegetables. “Soon enough,” he promised, “you’ll dream about chopping onions.”
The
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