He Threw It All Away

Thirty years ago, Bob Dylan released a song called “I Threw It All Away,” on his Nashville Skyline album.

“I must have been mad,
I never knew what I had,
Until I threw it all away.”

It’s been a few years since I’ve listened to the song, but it came quickly to mind when I read the account in today’s Star Tribune of the ex-soccer coach sentenced to twelve years in prison for sexually assaulting a teenage girl who played on the team he was coaching. The incidents began when the girl was only 14 and continued for over a year, becoming increasingly graphic and offensive.

At trial, in January 2009, the victim’s emotional testimony brought tears to the eyes of jurors. “I felt I was speaking for girls who didn’t have a voice,” the victim said after the offender, Eric Hawkins, was found guilty.

Hawkins, now 45, was unrepentant, smirking during the victim’s testimony, cursing his former attorney after sentencing, and kicking at the door of the courtroom as he was escorted back to his jail cell by sheriff’s deputies.

Did he kick and curse because he knew he’d thrown it all away?