Also known as, "let's not forget the nuance."
In my state a female teacher was discovered to be a full-time heroin addict a few years back. She did her job just find, but shot up each morning and night. I'm sure she was fired.
The story's a little trite taken as a whole and also lacks in terms of narrator dynamism and self-examination, but, you know. I'm putting it up for the nuance. AKA just because you are shitty in one way, even supremely, does not mean you have to be shitty in all the ways; aka Yes, you can say something sexist or racist or etc without being 100% sexist or racist or whatever all the time, and so defending such a statement by saying "But I'm not x" completely misses the point.
What I don't like: how the narrator lauds himself for being the only adult able to relate to the kids/not accept & protect sports, the "opium of the people," and the rest of the mainstream stereotypical HS culture that football symbolizes when the only other differentiators between himself & the adults that he offers is his drug addiction - but maybe it's a deliberate attempt to say "we all have our drugs" or something. Probably giving him too much credit here.
What is totally legit, though, is that whole "don't show up at [x] proscribed work/social event, get labelled as 'not committed' to work, regardless of actual work/time/effort put forth" thing. Welcome to workplace politics, kids
OftenBen - a very good example of gray in practice instead of white &or black