I have a confession to make. I am the worst basketball player on the planet. This has been proven many times in many various venues. Every so often, I get it in my head that I can get it. I think I’ll be able to pull a genuine cross-over and drive the lane...I think that’s how it goes. Instead I miss a layup and fall down in front of a laughing teenager...usually a laughing teenage girl who’s boyfriend just took the ball back down the court. This has generally happened at church camp.
My first realization that I may not be a talented athlete came in the 8th grade. Like in all Junior High schools, if you were in athletics, you “made the team”. There was the “A” team, the “B” team, and the “F” troop. For those of you unfamiliar with the world of Junior High Athletics, “A” is good, “B” is not as good as “A” and “F” means you failed a class and can’t play. While I spent my share of time in the “F” troop, I made the “B” team officially. Now most sports teams go a couple of players deep in each position. I played all the positions, but was 3rd and sometimes 4th string “B” team. Again...that means I was probably in the bottom 3-4 players in all of organized athletics at Hutcheson Junior High School.
One day during practice, either for morale boosting or to prove that we should not be playing sports, our coach pitted the 8th grade boys “B” team against the 8th grade girls “A” team. In addition to this, again for morale boosting or esteem destruction, the coach turned on the scoreboard and kept score. To make matters only slightly more uncomfortable, if this was the 8th grade girls “A” team...then i was dating Hannibal Smith. I use the phrase “dating” very loosely. In this day and age, dating meant we sat at lunch together and watched a movie in class once. Just to recap. 8th grade boys “B” team versus 8th grade girls “A” team, scoreboard on, my girlfriend the star of the opposing force.
The entirety of the game is a little hazy. Our shorts were so short and awkward. The thought of making physical contact with the opposite sex made us all sweat before we set foot on the court. Us guys just played street ball. We had no plays, no system for setting picks or screens or anything. The girls had plays. The girls had a plan. Now that I’m married, I should not have been surprised that the girls had a plan. My wife ALWAYS has a plan. The girls team mopped the floor with us. They took our infantile sense of budding masculinity and crushed it under their pink Nike’s and Reeboks. Exhausted, ashamed, and verily defeated, my buddy pats me on the arm and points to the scoreboard. 72-12. Girls...SEVENTY-TWO...boys...TWELVE. Be it true or not...in that moment, we were no longer the men we thought we'd become. We were infants in need of a diaper change and a bottle. I may have broken up with my girlfriend after that, too. You know...to reclaim my masculinity or something.
It’s entirely possible that our coach decided to use this opportunity to inform us that our dreams of playing with Jordan were effectively dead. He might have used this opportunity to kill said dreams under a truck driven by 12 year old girls. He might have just been too tired of trying to coach us that he scheduled a scrimmage with girls instead. Either way, I didn’t learn my lesson and kept trying to play pick-up games well into college.
Like a dog returning to his vomit, I tried to play basketball again this summer. I even made it in to an organized church camp tournament. Thank goodness we lost the first game. I don’t think I could have kept up the facade much longer than those 20 minutes.
The rest of 8th grade was a blur of awkwardness and smells. There were weird smells emanating from my body. There were these other wonderful smells coming from the girls. Seriously...girls smell like flowers or something. I have no idea how they do it. Then those smells give way to the overwhelming stench of the 8th grade boys father’s cologne. I seriously did NOT know how to use that stuff til well in to my marriage. Mix in the smell of some cafeteria pizza and soy burgers and I’ll flash back, vietnam style, to that game right now. Now, I'm still awkward...I just hide it a little better in front of the 7th and 8th graders.
I tried to make some super-deep spiritual meaning pop out of this, but I got nothing. I am very interested to hear your spiritual take on the embarrassment of my 8th grade persona.
No comments:
Post a Comment