A more appropriate title for this week’s interview might be “In the Living Room” with senior Andy Hall. A retired athlete, Hall sat down to discuss his living experiment documenting the parallel between quitting sports and failing in other aspects of one’s life. Andy has recently spent a significant amount of time on the living room couch and is having difficulty mounting stairs. Here is one man’s story.

Leslie: Andy, you retired from frisbee last year. Be honest. Do you miss the locker room?
Andy: You know...I do miss the locker room even though as a frisbee player here, we didn’t really have a locker room. We didn’t really have much of anything. But yeah...I do miss the team camaraderie. I played tennis all throughout high school and we didn’t have a locker room for that either but we did have a locker room for my eighth grade football team. That locker room was a great atmosphere. We were just a bunch of pumped up kids excited about playing football. I’m pretty lonely now.

L: What happened to your football and tennis careers?
A: Well, I broke my leg pretty badly and then after spending a year in a wheelchair, I decided to quit football. Never played it since. After high school I quit tennis. I pretty much haven’t played that since and if the pattern continues, I’ll probably never play frisbee again either. We’ll see.

L: Do you foresee yourself picking up any new sports in the near future?
A: You know...I really look to somehow improve my health whether that be through a sport or working out. The circumstances would have to be right. Lately, it’s been hard for me to walk upstairs. Sometimes I think to myself, “Damn, I remember when I used to be able to jump up these stairs like a puma.” But for now I think I need to just focus on what I really enjoy doing at the moment, which is not doing much at all.

L: Frisbee practice and tournaments take up a huge chunk of time. Have you replaced frisbee with any new hobbies or interests?
A: I think on the whole I use my time much more poorly. I end up wasting more time than I used to spend playing frisbee, just wasting it away. I definitely was more competitive as a person in general and now I’m just a couch potato who doesn’t care much about anything. I lied to myself about why I didn’t want to continue playing frisbee — because I would have more time to do other things. It was clearly a lie that I told myself and other people... Oh look! Here comes Peter. He’s a great guy.

(Sophomore Peter Nowogrodzki barges into the interview.)

Peter: Can I tell you my favorite thing about Andy Hall? At frisbee practice just after he would throw the disc down the field, he would stand like a cowboy, with two guns in his hand, some imaginary spurs strapped to his ankles, knees slightly bent, revelling in his shoot-out. It was awesome!

L: Peter, did you find Andy’s decision to quit the frisbee team at all inspiring?
P: Observing Andy’s wholesome lifestyle of Warcraft video gaming off the field inspired me to realize that there are greater possibilities in my life. Yeah, I also recently quit the frisbee team. Andy did not have any influence. I might seem like a quitter but I’m not.
A: But Peter, you did quit. This is what I’ve been talking to Leslie about: the lies that you tell yourself. I just have to admit it. I did quit. I quit straight up. There is no other word for it.

L: Andy, would you ever consider joining the Oberlin College tennis team...just so you could quit?
A: I’m not subversive about sports. I’m not a rebel who joins things only to quit them. But I think that had I joined the tennis team, the inevitable result would be quitting. I’ll tell you one thing though...I am in hideous physical condition. If I tried to run a mile right now, I would throw up all over the place. Worst shape of my life!

L: Andy, is there a take-home message that you would like Review readers to walk away with from this interview?
A: I don’t want to encourage people to quit sports. That’s not what we are after here. What we are after is perhaps the opposite. You can take a look at what I’ve become, which is a much more lazy, less motivated, less accomplished, less healthy individual and it all pretty much correlates with my not participating in sports anymore.

L: And your happiness level?
A: It has gone through the roof. Through the roof. Never been happier. And I don’t regret for one moment hanging up my cleats.

Andy leaves the interview with a smirk on his face, ambling off to find out whether or not his fridge is stocked with beer and whether he feels ambitious enough to climb his staircase for a healthy computer game diversion to fill the restless hours of the evening.