Coming to terms with your past. It is a problem all have faced or will face at some point in one’s life. Everyone has something they would rather forget, wish never happened, or wanted to turn out differently. In John Grisham’s Bleachers, Neely Crenshaw faces this exact problem. For fifteen years he has avoided the reality that he is “not a football hero anymore…You’re still living back then, still dreaming, still the all-American quarterback,” (Grisham 177, 14). That just because you have the jacket does not grant you superiority in the real world or even in high school. Everything does not turn out the way you want just because you are a Spartan on the field and a hero of the town. Cameron Lane, Neely’s first high school sweetheart, also struggles to learn that there…show more content… Though it took awhile, “ten years to get over you,” she accepts her past (Grisham 178). If one does not accept their past, then one cannot move on successfully with their future. Fifteen years later, Neely Crenshaw finally decides to return to his home town of Messina when his former football coach is on his death bed. He has regrets, hesitations, and second thoughts of coming home. It seems as if he doesn’t want to see old friends, “Maybe I don’t want to see them,” or to relive old memories (Grisham 19). Something is holding him down. He doesn’t want to “talk about football, okay?” (Grisham 71). Gradually, we are let in on what has really happened to Neely in his years since high school. In college, his knee was screwed up so badly during a game, he was told he might never play again, “It’s ruined,” they were right, (Grisham 56). We find out he didn’t end on