As I was cleaning/organizing our office closet the other day (read: moving boxes around and not really doing much else), I found a hockey jersey that was one of my prized possessions when I was a teenager. A lot of my friends and I owned hockey jerseys and some owned what the NHL shop calls “authentic” jerseys (and I think we called them “pro” jerseys). Then there was me who really didn’t have the money to buy an authentic jersey and would buy the replica ones that were about half the price. We all had at least one jersey for our favorite team–mine being the New York Rangers–as well as any others we thought were cool. In my case, that was Dartmouth.

My history with Dartmouth is kind of an odd one since it’s not the school from which I received either of my degrees. I first visited the college when I was a kid and my parents rented a cabin on Kezar Lake in New Hampshire, which is about half an hour to the east of where the college is located in Hanover. We didn’t go there for a college visit or anything; Hanover and the neighboring town of Lebanon both had shopping, restaurants, and multiplexes and we went there to eat dinner and then go to a movie. But Dartmouth became one of the first college campuses I ever visited and I was enamored of the place. Every time we went, we visited the Dartmouth Co-op and I’d buy a T-shirt or sweatshirt*, and when fitted baseball caps became popular, I bought one at the Co-op and wore it to school just about every day**. I considered all of it special because it was something that I knew nobody else had.

Uniqueness is something I think we all crave, but I may have put too much personal emphasis on it because I guess I thought it would make me cool or something. It obviously never did, but owning the Dartmouth swag did help make it my “dream school” when it came to applying for colleges. I’ve written about my college applications already, so I won’t go into too much detail except to say that I didn’t get in and I’m pretty sure it was a numbers thing. I might have been an honors student, but I didn’t have straight As and my SAT scores weren’t above 1400. So with dreams of Dartmouth dashed, I went to an “and where is that” school in the fall of 1995 and what I took with me was my personalized Dartmouth hockey jersey.

Now, the jersey didn’t come personalized when I convinced my parents to buy it at the Co-op. It was the cheaper “replica” jersey and therefore about $50 instead of the $100 that the authentic jerseys had, so it was made of a lighter polyester and the letters were ironed on instead of stitched on. But I wore the heck out of it and since my friends had started to get their favorite players’ names stitched on the back of their jerseys (one of my friends was a huge friend of Brendan Shanahan), I decided it would be cool to get my last name and the number 23 on the back of mine. Of course, that was not cool and it is a little hard to write that and not feel a little embarrassed, but I was too naive at the time to realize that and wore the heck out of it, especially when I played street hockey.

Funny enough, it was a completely different sport where the “Panarese jersey” (as it became to be known) solidified its reputation and that was softball. For four years, my group of friends fielded both men’s and co-ed teams in my college’s intramural softball league, and we won three championships. I also chronicled our team’s highs and lows in “The Intramural Diaries”, whcih was an occasional feature in my weekly newspaper column. College intramurals is a whole story in itself and my feelings about it are really complicated because for all of the fun I had, it’s hard to not look back on it and beat myself for how I took it so seriously and overreacted to my mistakes.

What I now know as anxiety was something that was undiagnosed throughout my childhood and adolesence, so I was high strung, sensitive, and took things very personally. That often meant–and still does–beating myself up for small mistakes, faux pas, or moments of awkwardness. On the softball diamond, I was a pitcher, and though my job was to simply serve the ball up, I felt a sting with every ball that got hammered to the back of the field and every run scored. I would stand on the mound feeling completely alone and as if every single person was blaming me. I would act out accordingly, throwing my glove in frustration at the end of the inning and then overplaying on offense to compensate.

The voice that echoed in my head during those moments is one that grew up alongside me and has been with me since I left college and put the Panarese jersey in a box. It’s the baggage that I can’t seem to get rid of and I even question whether someone else or myself was the cause of my mental health issues. That’s what I thought of when I pulled the jersey out and saw that it was in bad shape–pilly with some holes and number that were peeling off. I also felt embarrassed at how I ever thought it was cool to put my name on the jersey, and not in a “we can laugh about it now” sort of way. Throwing the jersey away sort of helped, but I would like to be able to enjoy the memories of my youth without having my issues intrude.

* I would have then would have to hear my classmates ask “What’s Dart-MOUTH” anytime I wore one of them to school.

** I gave the hat to my friend Vanessa after graduation. I guess I thought it was a sentimental keepsake to remember me by. I’m pretty sure that she threw it out because after I had worn it every day for a couple of years, it had gotten really gross.