Other Things Worthy of Your Time
Untitled Memoir of Basketball and Moi
11/26/03
Character test: what is someone worth after they give up on the only thing left they cared about?
I said I wasn’t going to go over it. It’s in the past and for once I was going to bury it deep and leave it there. I was going to write a beginning and an end to remind myself about it if I ever thought I should sift through things gone by and remember them. It was going to go like this:
“I was home schooled for three years in elementary,”
and
“When you don’t have any respect for yourself, that’s the worst thing of all.”
Vonnegut did it in a similar way. He said the story began and ended in a certain way then started telling the story, beginning and ending just like he said he would. He did it first, and, quite frankly, better than I ever would have. I could still give it a shot:
I was home schooled for three years in elementary. The only reason why, was I was a spoiled brat and didn’t like the way my life was going in school. Teachers were making me learn, and classmates were making it a normal childhood by being the little pricks they’re supposed to be. I guess I just didn’t want to be normal. Just wish my parents could have given me a little bit of a kick back in the right direction. Mentally, I had to grow up on my own, teaching myself the important things, getting only gravy from them as mentors. And they wonder why I showed so little respect for them. It’s not that I didn’t love them, it’s just that I had to teach myself why I should.
Someone once said, when I told them that reason for dropping out of school, that there had to be more to it than that. Nope, ‘fraid not. I whined a little and got my way. That’s just the way things worked.
I don’t know if I was a master manipulator or just a young version of the false actor I’d later be, but I could seem to make my parents believe things that most parents would tell their kids to shut up about and grow up. I used to bang my head on the floor (lightly I’ll add) to the point they’d think I was insane, sometimes just to get out of school work, and for the same reason, used to tell stories about the unbearable inadequacy of my teachers, so much that they began to believe my sister when she started telling them the same things with not nearly as good of an acting job.
Why have I always thought the world revolved around me? Cause I’ve never known any different.
I was close to alone for the three years of my life I decided to be home schooled. I was grounded in truth, I suppose, as I took Creation Sciences instead of Evolution, and got the chance to study Roman history, some foreign language, and what I later found out was the children’s version of Homer’s Odyssey. I wouldn’t have got those opportunities in public school…and what opportunities they were.
-MY FAVORITE BOOK!
D.S. LOWE”
Being alone and having only my mother to teach me while my dad was off making peanuts doing ranch work, I fell away from doing what little boys should do. I remember our rendition of ‘P.E.’ was me taking a basketball into the street as my mother tried her best to play defense as I dribbled by again and again. You’d think I would have known better with the lack of competition I’d been exposed to, but I thought I was pretty good.
That was my problem, I always thought I was pretty good.
I know it sounds particularly fake and completely odd, but that’s why I came back to public school: to play basketball. I wanted to do something other people actually cared about. Later on it would get to the point where I wanted to be good at something people actually cared about, and that’s what would kill me.
It was a rude awakening to say the least when I found out other people had actually been playing too when I was away in my little world. They knew what they were doing too as I shot two-handed and basically in whatever the direction the basket was. There was no natural talent with me, just boneheaded motivation to succeed. That’s enough to get the job done sometimes though.
So I started playing basketball in 7th grade and fit right in with the rest of the losers. We had one 8th grader who had no idea what he was doing (hint: he’d later have dentures and drop out of high school to pursue the family basket making business). I don’t even remember how many games we won. It wasn’t a lot, that’s for sure. The most dramatic was a 97-10 routing that saw one of our players get knocked out of the game by an intercepted pass that literally knocked him off his feet, and another later get knocked out of the rest of the season with a case of ringworm he picked up from the locker room. He still has a bald spot on his head to this day.
Our coach was a rumored gay man with a steel plate in his head and crooked glasses. “Grab the duct tape!” someone once yelled when he was coming to the locker room.
We had two plays. One was labeled ‘Trout’.
Good times. Some of the last of them actually.
The next year a friend from years past moved back and his older brother picked up the Junior High coaching position. As an 8th grader I would captain every game and watch our best player (in the brother of the coach) break his ankle in the first few weeks. As little as it means now, for what it was worth then, it became my team, and the sport as my pride, and my obsession.
For an 8th grade year of a losing Junior High basketball team, there was a lot more to it than there should have been. I believe we won three games. Only one was under my call.
The first game we won my friend went for 30 on the road. I missed the bus.
I was never particularly good, but no one in the whole conference was really. There were only two that stuck out, and one was on our team and out with a broken ankle. It took me forever to realize that someone had to do something if we were going to win, and everyone else had yet to step up. It was up to me. How quaint.
We were playing a team from a town I’d lived in for the first year I lived in Montana. They were truly abysmal. Short story short we lost the game like 12-8. I broke my knuckle for the first time and sat in the shower during the post game ‘we’ll get ‘em next time’. Everyone knew I cried. I guess they figured I had reason to.
We were playing the next day and I said if I didn’t win, I’d give up on the sport forever. We lost, and I lied, but maybe I’d found something in tears and ultimate failure that I needed.
A friend of mine (you know who you are) had jabbed at me during the week about how slow and worthless I was on the court. He didn’t quite say it that way but anything about basketball I always molded into what I wanted to hear.
We played the second best team in the conference that Friday at home and I think I forgot who I was.
I had 14 and we took a 7 point lead into the half. My broken-ankled compadre told me he’d never seen me play like that. It wouldn’t matter as I didn’t get the ball in the second half and finished with 16 and yet another loss. But I was ready to start doing what I was supposed to.
The next night we were in the place we’d lost 97-10 the year before. They were a stripped down team now with only one returning player as the majority of the old team now started on varsity. They were a young, inexperienced, and easily bothered squad that anyone could have smelled blood on. We still didn’t know how to win though and only snuck away as they missed a shot that would have won them the game at the buzzer. I had 14 and was the only one who didn’t celebrate on the way home. The coach asked for someone to step up. I was just doing what I thought I was told to.
The next weekend, fatefully, a case of the flu went around and we had to play our game with no subs. Thankfully, I had the flu too, and 4 points… We went back to losing and I forgot what it was like to be special.
We’d go on to lose all but one game in the final tournament of the season. I’d been given the job of guarding the best player in our little league in the first game and failed miserably. I did exactly what I wasn’t supposed to and we lost by 20. In the last game of our season I missed two easy lay-ins through the course of the game for my first scoreless outing and weeks as we lost by 4…
Next came high school.
My friend went onto his first season without an injury I think he’d ever have and traded off starting on varsity with leading the JV. I myself didn’t make varsity at all and ended up being cut from the team just before the last week of the season. I was a slacker and missed a lot of practice anyway, didn’t hustle, and didn’t even sit with the team.
We got a new coach for varsity who had high hopes in me my sophomore year. I guess he hadn’t heard about how big of losers we all year, and especially me. He did teach me how to shoot, but that was about all I got from that season. I would be suspended for a supposed death threat just before the first weekend we’d play and lose my spot on varsity. I didn’t show up one night I was supposed to start for JV and didn’t ever show up again. I’d become notorious as a quitter, even when I refused to ever do it again.
Then again, I guess I didn’t really never do it again.
The funny thing was, our JV coach just happened to be my coach in Junior High. He’d be disappointed more than anybody and never let me forget it. Well, disappointed more than anyone next to myself.
My junior year the varsity went 1-19. I started a handful of games but played only minutes a game, even after starting and contributing the very first weekend. We looked like we’d have potential for once and even I thought I might have something that had eluded me for so long.
If you didn’t start, you played JV, to get warmed up. I remember leading the JV team to a handful of wins, including one where I’d been exiled to the bench so the foreigners and seniors could start varsity, and the rest could start JV. Friggin’ losers. It’s sad when I of all people had to bail out our varsity starters from losing to a JV team. JV is so worthless. That’s why I nor anybody remembers how many games we even won.
Key Events during my Junior season:
-I started the first weekend because I was the only one on the team who knew how to attack the basket and draw a basket (on a piece of sketch paper—we were very artsy) (I meant foul not ‘basket’**). Later in the season they would tell me not to put the ball on the floor…
-The next night we lost but I’d been told beforehand I wouldn’t be starting, and that ‘it meant nothing’. I’d play JV that night and score 16 in a half game, giving the JV a taste of winning they had no idea from the guys they had leading them the night before. It was only a taste though…as we lost in the closing seconds… For me losing my starting spot meaning ‘nothing’, it was strange how I wouldn’t start again for a month. I won’t mention the fact we lost the second game by 4 and two squabbled plays by yours truly off the bench was what probably made the difference. Disappointing: the story of my life.
-I’d get my starting spot back just in time to play the team who had beaten our ass every year besides the time we snuck by by a point in junior high. It was 97-10 all over again, although we lost by a little bit less (in the 50s or something). I’d be the only one to score in the first quarter…even though I missed, yet again, more easy baskets.
-Like my 8th grade year we had the same coach and our best player went out with an injury—this time when he needed surgery on his shoulder. This time it was even more hopeless as I didn’t have what it took to step up. Then again, I never really got the chance.
The second time we played the 97-10 Wonders we were routed by 56 and I didn’t play a single second. We’d all joked about my depleting playing time but everyone was stumped by this. It was like I didn’t exist anymore. Just for the record, I’d been the only player on the team who had yet to miss a single practice. I’d miss one that coming Monday in protest. It’d be the only one I’d miss, even showing up for two on a sprained ankle to do as much running as I could. My coach still felt inclined to give me bull about not playing me because he thought after missing the practice I was going to quit again.
You can’t give people a reason to bring up the past, because they’ll always seem to remember things you’ve tried to forget.
-The last game of the season would be in a tournament and I’d miss the bus. I showed up to school in time to be told the team had already left, before school would even start. No one had bothered to tell me. I was told it was my responsibility to know. It was obvious I wasn’t wanted on the team anymore. I refused to sit on the bench anymore though, as we would get killed again. So I stood on the sideline instead…
The last thing I did was take off my jersey and say I’d never wear the colors again. The last thing the coach would say to me was that things in the past had nothing to do with the way he treated me this time around. Cut the crap, I know I’d been wrong for being lazy and a chronic quitter in the past, but it’s hard enough to get away from the habit yourself, let alone when people are trying their best to make sure you don’t.
So it came to this, we moved to escape the town, and just when I was starting to feel a part of it for the first time. We moved back to the place I’d been born and grown up and the only thing I could thing about? Basketball.
I had three motivations for playing basketball this year:
-succeed to shove it down the throats of everyone that had wanted to bury me out west
-succeed to impress the girls wherever I might go
-succeed to finally step out of the shadow of failure I’d cloaked myself with
The whole time I had my immediate family and relatives telling me how I would be rudely awakened and how I shouldn’t even bother, while the people around me who I’d actually play with or impress (and who actually knew what they were talking about) I had believing just as much as I did myself that this time would be different.
The first week I came to school I found who played basketball and was introduced to the coach. I shot around every day after school and found myself getting up early every day to lift with the more dedicated few who played. Through doing what I did, I met people and my false sense of dedication was what made my life easier. I truly believed I cared so much for the sport and was ready to compete along with everyone else and for all the right reasons.
Really, I had everyone fooled, myself most of all.
A few weeks ago I was playing better than I ever have. Not only was I playing basketball well enough to make a Class A team that had finished 2nd in Eastern Maine but finally had a killer instinct and jock’s mentality to be a healthy contribution every night. I was shooting well, handling decent, and exploding for once too. I was motivated completely, and it was all coming together just in time.
It seemed to fall apart with even better timing.
I don’t know where or when it happened exactly but I started developing the worst case of ‘soft hands’ I’ve ever had. I used to be a turnover machine before but now I couldn’t even hold onto the ball when I tried to shoot. I had no control and was getting self-conscious, and falling back to the area of ground where I felt like giving up.
One night it was the last game of our intramurals league and my team was on it’s way to handing a team its first loss and going on to the championship game. I’d done by part to contribute on both ends of the court throughout our games but in the closing seconds found myself on the bench with no call for help. I couldn’t have done anything anyway.
Someone told me you get to the point where you’ve improved so much that the only way to go is down, and you have to work your ass off to at least stay at the same level until you’re ready to get better again. I don’t think this happened to me. I was completely and utterly worthless, and wasn’t just falling back down slowly, but had fallen apart completely. Spank me for the analogy, but it was like the dream team in Space Jam who had their talent stolen by the cartoon aliens. The ball felt weird to even look at. Even when I worked for hours a night and on weekends, it was like I’d never played before, enough to the point where I finally had to call it quits.
It hadn’t hit the rocks exactly in line with tryouts—that came a week earlier. I’d accepted then that I wasn’t an athlete, and didn’t have what it took to do what I thought I could do. So what I did have in time for tryouts was a complete lack of motivation.
I always wondered what it was like to care about nothing whatsoever. I don’t know if I like the feeling now. It’s purely empty. It’s like a broken heart without the pain in your chest.
I worked hard during tryouts, whenever work was required. Seeing as my legs are still so sore I have trouble walking, I must have run pretty hard at least some of the time. When it was time for basketball though, I made it clear I wanted no part of it.
The worst part of failure is when everybody else realizes you have. Very few people knew I no longer could play ball and many didn’t know what my problem was when it looked like I wasn’t trying. Really, I wasn’t trying to make the team, but even when I tried to play the game, it evaded me. My pride was being shot to death and I was the one pulling the trigger.
“Humble me O Lord.”
Yep.
It was all sort of sad because I could feel the motivation in the back of my mind and bleakly remember my feelings of superiority over some of the people that were able to walk all over me now. I watched the freshman and JV teams practice and there were so many things I wanted to tell them they should do, but I had no place to.
I’d decided before I even came in that day that I was finally giving up on the sport and wouldn’t be playing that year, so nothing came as a surprise really. The worst part wasn’t making the team but having to hurt my pride over and over again by showing how weak I’d become.
There are still people that don’t know I didn’t make the team. The girls team (who I’d earned at least some respect from in playing around) came in just as we were going over one, final lay-up drill—a work drill—so I appeared normal. I’d get to save face for awhile at least.
It’s disappointing to think about what people will think about you when they might have had even just a little bit of respect for you and you give up the only reason they could have it. Still, after the family, and the coaches, and friends, and everybody that didn’t believe in you have the last laugh, and the people that did support you have no reason to ever again, you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror in the end. Let’s just say I don’t really want to talk to myself right now.
When you don’t have any respect for yourself, that’s the worst thing of all.
NOTES
This was a Life as Written entry. It's easy enough to figure out why I wrote it.