We often hear about being picked last for teams. My experience was just a little different. I was consistently picked NEXT to last, at least when the guy who usually got picked last was present. I wonder if he had any idea how much pain and humiliation he was sparing me by being there to take it on himself. Would it have made him feel any better to have known that? Probably not. (After all, I had been more that willing to have him suffer the fate I wished to avoid.)
These days I am trying harder to remember that everything is not about me. I am coming to believe that as individuals contemplating our worth we overestimate our separateness from each other and the rest of humanity. Words are failing me, so I googled John Donne:
"No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were."
Are there really unchosen teams? I doubt it.