Side Story 1: The Legend of Shooter

Two preliminary notes:

1) With apologies to the few folks that have been nice enough to read this, I need to devote a little time to preparing for the GRE (the standardized test for graduate schools), so I may not post too many things until after the test on October 22^nd. I will come back to doing it regularly after that and, when I do, I hope you’ll be kind enough to come back, too. I think I know who you are, so I’ll try to let you know when I’m back to writing regularly.

2) Every once in a while, just for a change of pace, I may toss in a story that is only tangentially related to this narrative. It may be about family, it may be about friends. It may be just to get some stories preserved before time steals them from my memory. It may be just because telling them is fun for me. Or it may be because someone that reads this blog says, “I really enjoy the blog. But WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO WRITE ABOUT US?!?!”

So this one’s for you, Brandon.

****

“Ya know what I mean?”

I didn’t know what he meant. I had never spoken to him before. I was simply standing on the narrow walkway outside our suite of rooms enjoying the evening air. My questioner had come skidding out from a nearby hallway in our college dorm, staring down at me with a smile and an expectation of agreement. I still remember how he looked at me with such absolute certainty. His confidence alone was nearly sufficient to convince me that he was right.

It was my introduction to both Brandon and perhaps his greatest gift – the power to persuade a person simply through the force of his will.

****

In February 1996, the movie Happy Gilmore was released. As card-carrying members of Adam Sandler’s target audience, my friends and I soon found our way to a local theater. Sandler plays the title character, a lovable hockey goon turned golfer with a hellacious drive and rebellious spirit. Happy’s antagonist is an established, arrogant, and insufferable professional golfer named Shooter McGavin. A typical exchange between the two rivals concludes with Shooter pointedly declaring to Happy, “I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast!”

Happy grins, tilts his head slightly, and asks a little too innocently, “You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?”

Yep, my friends and I were real intellectuals.

For reasons surpassing my understanding to this day, in the next few weeks Brandon started calling me “Shooter”. To my great regret, I made the foolish and fatal mistake of admitting my displeasure with the moniker. To me, Shooter was the arrogant ass from Happy Gilmore and the hapless, basketball-preaching, alcohol-abusing absent father/assistant coach from Hoosiers. Neither was a character with whom I wanted to be associated. My resistance only fueled Brandon’s fun.

Many other nicknames from Brandon had come and gone. There was a cycle: some random inspiration, a few weeks of squeezing the joke dry, then moving on to the next title. But Brandon still calls me Shooter. He always will. The Legend of Shooter will never die.

What follows is the reason why.

****

A few weeks after the release of Happy Gilmore, as part of another proud intellectual tradition, six of us headed to a cheap, seedy, and sleazy location for spring break. In 1996, it was Panama City, Florida. I don’t know of too many people that have gone through college and avoided this experience. The journey is supposed to provide a collegiate circle of friends with stories that will last a lifetime. In that respect, our trip certainly delivered.

My friends’ stories are the typical ones. The guilty shall remain nameless:

• Four of our number decided to try out a new drug on the first night of the vacation. The choice was smokeless tobacco. Three tossed moderate amounts into their front lip, marking the commencement of an addiction that would carry through graduation a year later and beyond. One, a mountain of a man from the wilds of western North Carolina, packed in a dip equal to those he probably saw others use in his hometown. But he had forgotten a word well-known by any intoxicant-seeking collegian: tolerance, of which he had none.

It was not an uncommon experience for him to spend extensive time on his porcelain throne. It’s just that usually he stationed his tail upon it, not his face. Then again, on that particular night, I’m not sure he knew the difference.

• The most enterprising member of the group separated from the rest of us early the next day. We lost track of him for the entire afternoon. He returned, sunburned and unsteady, around six o’clock. He stumbled silently between two of us to the narrow hallway which led to both the bedroom and the bathroom. He needed to turn right. He turned left. The next noise that was heard was undoubtedly urination – except that he wasn’t hitting water. By the time we had determined what he was doing and hustled down the hallway – to what? Stop him? – he had fully soiled the mattress.

“What the hell are you doing?” we asked.

Staring down at the bed, still finishing his stream, he plaintively pleaded three now immortal words:

“But I’m right.”

• Since the six of us were squeezed into four beds, a few had to share. In the middle of one night, one of the guys sharing a bed felt someone tracing a line up his back. Annoyed and tired, he assumed that the other guy in the bed was messing with him. “Cut it out!”

“Cut what out?”

“Stop touching me!”

“Dude, I’m nowhere near you.”

It wasn’t a finger creeping up his spine. It was a cockroach – and what’s a good Florida trip without a cockroach story?

• On my last night in Panama City, the most laconic member of the group – and the one with the most serious girlfriend – grabbed a broomstick in the height of inebriation and skipped around the room on the back of his imaginary horse, screaming, “Who’s gonna be Cori tonight?” (He’s a good boy – he eventually married Cori and the only thing he rode around the room that night was the broomstick. But it was still funny.)

And me?

I belonged in Panama City as much as Yo-Yo Ma belongs on stage at an Ozzie Osbourne concert. I suppose both are musicians, but that’s where the common ground ends. Similarly, I was a college student, but a Panama City spring break vacation didn’t have much to offer me. The entire experience of ubiquitous intoxicants, abandoned inhibitions, and…well, not much else wasn’t meant for me. So one day, in the middle of the morning, I was sitting on the beach in the midst of gale-force hormones and abundant empty beer cans and I found myself completely and utterly bored. Luckily for me, I am the most easily amused person on the planet, so I was bound to find something that would entertain me.

It wasn’t going to come from the people around me. I’ve never much cared for engaging unfamiliar people in various stages of drunkenness and I didn’t see anyone who was not somewhere along that spectrum. It wasn’t going to come from the ocean. The water was still clinging to a winter chill and if I ran to Taco Bell and then stationed myself 50 feet from shore, I could’ve created better waves. It had to come from the shore. So I started sliding sand forward and backward beneath my hand. I decided that I’d keep pushing that earth aside until something more appealing came along.

Six hours later, I had to amend my plan – I’d keep pushing the earth aside until something more appealing came along… or until my arms nearly fell off. At that point, I was standing on the floor of my own miniature stadium. By the day I left, girls wishing to sunbathe on a particularly windy morning used my hole as shelter – three of them could fit at a time. As I was creating the most natural and unnatural of tanning booths, a few people had stopped by to derisively laugh or simply stare. I could’ve sold tickets. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step right up – he’s sober, he’s silent, he’s stupid – and he’s digging a hole! Freak show, five dollars!”

Later that evening, Brandon was standing around with some guys from another school. One of them changed the topic of conversation to me, saying with a disbelieving chuckle, “Did you see that guy digging a hole today?”

Brandon looked up at him and smiled, “Yeah, that guy was a dork, wasn’t he?”

The unfortunate soul stepped into the trap, laughing more fully and starting to continue, “Yeah….”

He sensed a new bond. He sensed wrong. He was crossing an old one. Sudden intensity entered Brandon’s eyes as his tightening muscles pulled his body towards his new adversary, and he announced with anger through gritted teeth,

“That dork is my friend.”

****

But perhaps the most enduring story of our spring break didn’t take place in Panama City. In fact, Brandon and I were almost 700 miles apart when it happened.

On Wednesday night after dinner at Hooters – because apparently we hadn’t seen enough women in skimpy outfits – half of us headed back towards North Carolina. I had a ticket to the ACC Tournament, which started on Thursday. The other two had different reasons for heading north, so we drove together through the night to arrive back in Chapel Hill early on Thursday afternoon. I took a brief nap on the couch while The Godfather, Part II played in the background. But even after being awake for most of the previous 36 hours, I couldn’t really sleep. I was too excited.

I’ve attended several NCAA Tournament games, including a Final Four and a national championship game. I’ve seen Michael Jordan in his formative college years, in his absolute prime in Chicago, and in his last turn on the stage in Washington. I’ve seen my share of concerts, plays, and performances. But I have never been more excited to be present at an event than I was for the ACC Tournament. I was raised on this experience. When I was younger and basketball was on television far less frequently, the ACC Tournament meant there would be seven televised games in three days, and if I hurried home from school on the opening Friday, I could see almost all of them. It would even be fair to say that my favorite two days on my childhood calendar were Christmas and the opening day of the ACC Tournament. So when my father was offered tickets to the ACC Tournament in 1987, he actually called to ask me if it was okay that he went without me. That’s how much it mattered.

At 5:30, the gates opened at the Greensboro Coliseum. I was at the front of line, if you consider one person to constitute a line. I was in my seat at 5:45, game program in hand, sitting on the edge of my seat with glazed eyes and a goofy grin plastered on my face. All of this for a game between the worst two teams in the conference to see who would be slaughtered the following day at the hands of the number one seed. The game stunk. The stands were empty. I was the only person sitting in my section of the stadium, but in spite of the uncompetitive contest and the cavernous surroundings, the silly smile remained – to me, on that night, the Greensboro Coliseum was Mecca itself.

****

Panama City was never the promised land to me and by Thursday nobody else was enjoying it either. The weather had turned bitter – rainy, windy, and just plain nasty, with temperatures stunningly close to freezing. Only the extraordinarily bored, drunk, or stupid dared go out on the beach. The three remaining in Florida were so desperate for entertainment that they visited a museum – because nothing screams “spring break” like a museum. In the version of their end of the story that I remember, it was The Old Man and the Sea Museum, but it appears that the actual name is The Museum of Man in the Sea. I believe the story goes that one of them nearly got stuck in a submarine, not unlike Winnie-the-Pooh getting his head stuck in the hole at Rabbit’s home:

http://poohpicoftheday.blogspot.com/2005/09/winnie-pooh-stuck-in-rabbits-hole-as.html

In further evidence of the spread of the internet, the museum now actually has a website, too:

http://museum-of-man-in-the-sea.panamacitybeachfanatic.com/

If the fact that they went to a museum doesn’t fully capture the extent of their boredom, their next decision was an even greater indication. They chose to drive south to Tampa, Florida, to visit one of their grandmothers. In twenty-four hours, they had transitioned from drunken college girls and Hooters to museums and a grandmother. Then again, none of those other girls was likely to wake at 4 a.m. to squeeze fresh orange juice.

****

I woke up early Friday morning and headed back to Greensboro, again arriving 90 minutes prior to the tip-off of the first of four quarterfinal games. There would be two games in the afternoon session (beginning at noon) and two games in the evening session (beginning at 7 p.m.). The most important contest of the day, featuring North Carolina and Clemson, wouldn't tip-off for nearly eleven hours after my arrival, but I was excited all the same. By the beginning of the first game, I was no longer the only person in my section, but I was still the only North Carolina fan. Since I had purchased only a single ticket, I had been squeezed into a section of wealthy alumni rather than sitting with other students. They had sold their tickets to the afternoon games, which left me surrounded by fans of Maryland, Georgia Tech, Duke, and North Carolina State. In part because exhaustion was beginning to set upon me, and in part because of our lack of common purpose, I didn’t say a word during the entire afternoon session.

By the evening games, the combination of the long drive back from Florida, sitting still in less-than-comfortable seats for two days, having no one for conversation, eating poorly, and sleeping on a friend's couch was beginning to catch up with me. There were no unexpected upsets or fantastic finishes to provide a surge of adrenaline. As excited as I wanted to be to see my first ever North Carolina ACC Tournament game, my energy was flagging. Tired and sore, I was at least now surrounded by Tar Heel faithful, but they were an elegant and restrained bunch of middle-aged alumni. I suspect that the other members of my row of seats were wearing more money than I am likely to earn in this lifetime. Impressive as that might (or might not) be, it was highly unlikely to energize me. By tip-off of the North Carolina-Clemson quarterfinal, I was desperately hoping for a second wind, but I was fading badly.

****

In Tampa, my friends were full of orange juice and happily ensconced in a welcoming home, but they were nonetheless bored out of their collective wits. They sat together watching the games in grandmother’s house seeking some sort of new inspiration. Then, like the Grinch who stole Christmas, Brandon got an idea. An awful idea. Brandon got a wonderful, awful idea.

Brandon decided that he wanted to have something announced over the public address system at the Greensboro Coliseum. It depended on concocting an emergency situation. It depended on impeccably explaining an immense lie about said emergency situation. It depended on complete conviction in an utter falsehood. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Brandon.

He placed a frantic call to the Greensboro Coliseum. He claimed that his name was Tommy and that he urgently needed to find his brother, Shooter. Shooter's wife had gone into labor. She wasn't due to deliver for another six weeks, so she, Shooter, and everyone else had agreed that it was safe for Shooter to go to the Tournament. Poor Shooter didn't possess a pager – and this was before cell phones were common – and Tommy had to find a way to reach him. Tommy begged for the poor person at the other end of the phone to make an announcement over the public address system notifying Shooter to go to Duke Medical Center, where his wife had just arrived. Maybe, just maybe, if the announcement was made, then Shooter would make it back for the birth of his first child. Please, ma’am, help bring this family together!

The person at the other end of the line was hesitant, but after “Tommy" pleaded with her for a few minutes, she eventually said she would see what she could do. The seed planted, the boys in Tampa huddled around the television, turned up the volume to its highest level, and patiently waited for the legend to sprout.

****

Back in Greensboro, I was nearing the edge of delirium. The second wind had never arrived. I was struggling to remain upright in my seat. My back ached, my eyes drooped, and my Tar Heels were offering an uninspired performance. I was simply drained – and I was growing increasingly worried about the long drive home.

With about two minutes to go in the first half, with North Carolina holding a small lead, the ball went out-of-bounds. I looked down, resting my elbows on my knees and trying to blink the slumber from my eyes, shaking my head to clear it. Not unlike Kevin Costner in the cornfield, I then heard the voice:

"Shooter, please report to the activities desk."

If I had a thought, it was probably that I was grateful to be aware of the precise moment when I lost my mind. I shot straight up in my seat, my eyes wide and quickly scanning to see if anyone else had heard the announcement. Everyone to the left was still intently focused on the game. Check. I looked to the right. Same thing. So I eased back slightly, in retrospect a little too content with the fact that I was hearing voices, when the voice boomed again:

"Shooter, please report to the activities desk."

Deciding that if this was a delusion, it was a damn good one, I closed my eyes and threw my head back to laugh, howling at the top of my lungs. When my eyes reopened, everyone within a ten-seat radius was staring at me. The woman to my left, sharply dressed and sophisticated, raised an eyebrow and offered the one-word question – "Shooter?"

That would be me.

****

In Tampa, Brandon and the boys had erupted. Their ears had been pinned to the television to determine the success of one of the most audacious prank calls in history. Upon hearing the announcement, they bounced around the room as if they had just won the lottery. This might have been equally as memorable for Brandon as a million dollar prize.

Brandon had talked people into things before. I've watched him convince people that the laws of time, space, and physics were different than they knew them to be, simply because he said so. He's still trying to convince me that there's a species of fish that you can hold in your hand that will divide through your fingers – completely separating its body– then reform on the other side. It might be more compelling if he didn't call them "liquid fishes". I'm seen him mesmerize all manner of unsuspecting targets, though certainly maturity has dented the frequency of such events. But pranking the Greensboro Coliseum remains the greatest stunt I’ve ever witnessed.

Orange juice for everyone!

****

I sat there chuckling for a few minutes, shaking my head and questioning how in the name of all that is good and pure that announcement had ever happened. I began to wonder if there actually was a message for me. For all I knew, Brandon and the boys were actually out in the lobby waiting for me – I figured nobody would have made such an announcement based on a telephone call. Even though I was running on fumes at that point, I figured it wouldn’t be right to simply ignore this amazing call. So I struggled out of my seat at halftime and approached an usher, asking where the activities desk might be located. He politely pointed to my left, though he was unable to restrain himself from also raising an eyebrow which screamed, "Shooter?!?” I meandered towards a series of tables in the concourse and, with my head lowered a bit, asked a woman behind the desk, "Do you have a message for Shooter?"

Another eyebrow raised. She looked at me sternly. "Are you Shooter?" she questioned.

"Uh... I'm taking his messages," I sheepishly replied.

"Your wife isn't pregnant, is she?" she snarled as her glare grew.

"No, ma'am."

She launched into a lecture on how the public address system is not to be used for jokes and is for emergencies only, fully determined to educate me on the dangers of the misuse of this important community service. It was an indisputable speech. Chastened, I returned to my seat to be devastated by the day’s great upset and fantastic finish, as the Tigers completed a two-point victory over the Tar Heels with a game-winning dunk by Greg Buckner as an enduring exclamation point.

****

Within five minutes of returning home, the phone rang. “So, how ya doin’?” Brandon chirped.

“Seven pounds, nine ounces,” I answered, offering my imaginary child's dimensions and a single comment on Brandon’s brilliance, “You punk.”

The legend has lived ever since, as has the name. Even the game won’t die – the Clemson victory was perhaps the greatest win in the history of the school, so when ESPN Classic ran a “Classic South Carolina Day” a few years ago, they chose this game to repeat on behalf of Clemson University. I just happened to be flipping through the channels when I came across it and when the clocked ticked towards the end of the first half, I jacked up the volume and laid an ear to the screen.

Poor Shooter’s wife. That woman is going to be in labor for all eternity.

6. Peaking Early

Here’s the instruction manual for the most astonishing 13 minutes of individual, offensive basketball that I have ever seen:

Step 1: For an appetizer, drive to your left past Richard Hamilton and finish with a double-pump, left-handed lay-up over Jason Maxiell. Draw a foul. Make the free throw.

Step 2: Drill a twenty-five-foot three-pointer over Rasheed Wallace from the top of the key.

Step 3: Blow past Maxiell with a cross-over dribble at the free throw line, then throw down a one-handed tomahawk dunk so ferocious that it leaves Tayshaun Prince scurrying from beneath you like a frightened rat.

Step 4: Follow that up by sprinting past Prince (who was formerly known as a defender) and exploding towards the basket so quickly that he attempts to shove you out-of-bounds – and succeeds – and you still nearly effortlessly throw the ball through the hoop on your way past the rim.

Step 5: Take a break, maybe have a glass of lemonade, make two free throws.

Step 6: Jab step to the left, and when Prince leans in that direction and turns his head, execute a perfect backdoor cut, take the quick pass in stride and complete the play with another man-among-boys slam – or perhaps, more accurately, man-over-boys slam. If you have to duck to avoid introducing your forehead to the backboard, all the better.

Step 7: Catch your breath for the stretch run. Make three free throws. Throw in a missed free throw – maybe even an airball, too – just to show you’re human. Keep ‘em guessing.

Step 8: I don’t think you’ve looked into the teeth of a triple team yet, have you? You’re due for one. Try this – dribble hard to your right, rise over Chauncey Billups, Maxiell and Wallace and shoot a twisting, fading twenty-two footer.

Step 9: One sharp dribble to the left to a quick step-back twenty footer over Prince. Strut backwards past the other team’s head coach and suggest he might want to try something else to stop you. Like the Marines, perhaps. Not one of them – all of them.

Step 10: Mix it up a little for the finishing stretch – start with a dribble to the left, switch back to the right with a behind-the-back dribble and leap straight into a pull-up twenty-two footer over Billups. Retreat down the court while motioning both palms downward, as if patting small children on the head and saying, “That’s okay, kids – someday you’ll be big boys, too.”

Step 11: Dribble to the left and launch a twenty-four-foot, three-point jumper over Chris Webber and Billups.

Step 12: Finish with a drive down the heart of the lane past – count ‘em off: one, two, three, four, five – all five defenders, and complete your sprint with a double-pump, right-handed layup.

Step 13: And you’ll be a man, my son.

It looked like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Px-jPm_TU

There’s nothing that sequence doesn’t have. Well, I guess it didn’t have any passing, but it had everything else. He did it inside and outside. He did it to a point guard, shooting guard, two small forwards, two power forwards, and a center. He did it one-on-one, over a double-team, past a triple-team, and finally through the whole team. He did it going left and he did it going right. He did it with explosive power and speed. He did it with a magician’s sleight-of-hand. He did it going forwards, backwards, and sideways. He did it going through, over, and under. He did the ridiculous, he did the absurd, he did the insane. He did anything he wanted. He did it all. He did it all by himself.

Those of you that aren’t basketball fans got bored halfway through reading that for the same reason that it’s so ridiculous. It just didn’t end. It wasn’t one absurd play, it was ten absurd plays, one after another, with a few free throws tossed in for flavor. You couldn’t do that on a video game. I actually tried #10, except that there was nobody on me, no one watching, and nothing riding on it. I tried four times. I hit the rim once. Give me that old Fisher-Price hoop, five teddy bears, and a very active imagination and it would still take me a few hours to accomplish the whole list. To score 29 of your team’s last 30 points, including the last 25 in a row? In the NBA Playoffs? In Game 5? Against the top seed in the conference? On their home floor? In the fourth quarter and through two overtimes?

This was Lebron James announcing to the Detroit Pistons and the world, “My name is Lebron James – and I am better than you.”

Lebron forced the basketball world to believe, at least for a night. We were all witnesses.

A few days later, I called my father and asked if he’d seen James’ performance. He had not. I described it in slightly less detail than I did above and concluded by saying, “Twenty-five straight points. I have never seen anything like that in my life. Have you?”

“Yeah,” he answered without hesitation.

“Who?” I asked, stunned that he had a command of sports history superior to mine.

“You.”

Oh, yeah, I did do that once….

****

Men tend to forget. It is a standard principle of the human experience, constantly replayed in television sitcoms and beer commercials. Men forget anniversaries. Men forget their obligations. Men forget names. Cue the laugh track.

So I was a little surprised that my childhood stat sheet rose more immediately in my father’s mind than in my own. With the exception of song lyrics and sporting events, he does not possess an exceptional memory. There are numerous gaps in his recall, including considerable gaps in his recollection of his childhood. But there is one person he remembers from his elementary school days. I suspect that most men remember this particular person. I know that I do.

We remember the girl who developed first.

It is a constant in generation after generation. Somebody always develops first. For me – and the other lucky fifth-grade boys at a seaside elementary school in Florida – it was Danielle. The wand of puberty waved across our little world and christened Danielle as the first girl to enlarge our eyes and hearken to our hormones. I’m not sure if we even realized why we found her so mesmerizing. I’m not sure if we even understood why we liked those curves so much. Come to think of it, I still don’t know exactly why. But we did then and we do now.

She controlled every eye in the room, drawing adoring drool from the tongues of boys and jealous darts from the eyes of girls. Perhaps there was some initial revelry in her newfound attention, but from what I’ve been told, it doesn’t last. I’ve spoken to a few women who had this experience and they have not described it as pleasant in their memory. They describe the confusion of experiencing adolescence before their friends and the misery of being unable to escape the glare.

Still, I could be wrong, but I imagine that there were some of them that did enjoy the attention that their bodies brought to them. I imagine that some part of them, however briefly, enjoyed the adoration and attention. I also imagine that they may have felt some small disappointment when puberty came to their classmates. I imagine that no matter what it is that makes a person feel special, some part of them hates to see it go.

****

While other boys were flirting with Danielle, I was flirting with basketball greatness, spending multiple hours each day with my backyard basketball hoop. My favorite thing to do in those years was shoot in the driveway while listening to a Top 40 radio station, which partly explains my enduring affection for both basketball and cheesy 80s songs. Somewhere in those sessions on the cement, I discovered the two basketball branches of the Christopher Columbus tree – namely that the ball was round and the floor was flat.

It sounds pretty basic, doesn’t it? Throw a round, inflated ball against a flat surface and some basic knowledge of the physical world should lead you to accurately predict where it will go. A few iterations of the experiment should be sufficient to reach a conclusion. But much as Bugs Bunny never studied law, fifth graders haven’t studied physics, and every one of the other boys in the parks and recreation league was still withholding judgment. They’d stare at the ball as it left their hand and watch it patiently until it returned. Then they’d watch it again. And again.

This singular focus on the dribbling experiment prevented them from looking at their teammates, defenders, or the basket while they were dribbling the ball. My awareness of each of these things gave me an immense advantage. Imagine standing on a court with nine other players. Everyone else is playing with blinders, except that instead of being unable to look right or left, they can’t look up whenever they have the ball. Do you think you could take advantage of it?

My season of taking advantage of it was fifth grade, never more so than in one midweek game when we were missing one of our three best players. The second, our shooting guard, scored our opening basket of the game. I had the rest in a 27-21 victory – twenty-five straight points. There’s no signature shot or sequence of offensive maneuvers that stands out in that performance. If there was anything exceptional about that game, it wasn’t a shot or even a statistic.

With a little under two minutes remaining on the clock, we held a slender lead. My instructions were to keep possession of the ball, circling through the other team’s defenses until the clock had expired – in short, to dribble until I could dribble no more. I received the in-bounds pass and started weaving my way through the opposition. The small crowd cheered. The coaches screamed. The players and referees followed me around the floor. I circled back towards mid-court, leaving two defenders in my wake, as my head swiveled to take in all of my surroundings. Without picking up my dribble, without slowing down, I screamed, “Start the clock!”

No one else had noticed. The volunteer parent at the scorer’s table was apparently mesmerized, too, and had neglected his one responsibility. I was in control of the scoring, I was in control of the ball, I was in control of the outcome, and I was now even in control of time. Whenever that happens, it’s special. There are a million differences between James’s performance and mine. He was 6’8”, 245 pounds and could do anything that man has done on a basketball court – and a few things that no man has ever done before. I was still a victim of signs at amusement parks that said, “You must be at least 54 inches tall to ride.” He was playing on the grandest of basketball stages in front of 20,000 fans and millions watching on television. I was playing in a nearly empty junior high school gym with a few dozen parents and siblings and the face of a Scottish terrier stamped on the center circle. Fans will talk about his performance for generations. Even when prompted, I didn’t remember mine.

I don’t care.

Twenty-five straight is twenty-five straight.

Those parents and siblings didn’t know it then and they certainly don’t know it now, but on one winter day in 1986, they were all witnesses.

****

I had a few distinct advantages in that game. I could dribble without watching the floor. I had good vision. I had confidence in my ability. I was coordinated. I was also, undoubtedly, lucky. Within the next few years, all of those advantages would be somewhat muted by the improvement in skills of other boys. But there was a bigger obstacle.

Danielle and I were both about to be destroyed by the same kryptonite – the sweeping tidal wave of puberty that was going to realign the landscape of our peers as we moved into junior high school. Danielle would soon be just another girl fighting her way upstream toward adulthood. I was destined for a parallel fate. As other boys grew taller, faster, and stronger, my physical limitations would become glaring deficiencies in the game that I loved. I faced years of struggling to find an equalizer.

In retrospect, it is apparent that I was merely the basketball player who developed first. I had a few gifts, which provided me with a fleeting ability to control basketball games, just as Danielle had a momentary capacity to captivate her classmates. With the general onset of adolescence, Danielle and I both lost our control and our confidence. We lost the one thing that made us special.

I don’t know if Danielle ever recovered. It took me almost twenty years.

****

5. Patterns

There was an informal press conference after that third-grade championship game. It consisted of my mother videotaping a few of us standing around with our trophies. I’m in the center of the picture, flanked by my teammates. At the beginning of a very brief interview, my eyes turn toward the camera and I appear to listen to a question. My smile quickly grows to my ears and I shrug with more than a twinkle of cockiness in my eyes that screams, “Of course I knew they were going in!” Everyone laughs.

Look closely at that smile. There is a persistent pattern at play here.

****

The pattern begins with my very first memory. It is the story of the last Christmas party my parents ever hosted. There’s a reason it was their last party.

They had invited friends from both the office and the neighborhood to share in a little holiday cheer. After decking the halls and preparing the provisions, my parents were confronted with the challenge of what to do with their son during the festivities. I was nearly three years old and would be alert and active at the designated hour, so my parents found a chaperone for me. He was charged with keeping me quiet and content so that I would be seen and not heard. He led by example.

He was a gingerbread man. My parents knew their son. It has never taken much to entertain me.

He was a rather substantial gingerbread man, requiring both of my hands and most of my attention. I carried him carefully as I bobbed and weaved among the slacks and skirts of the assorted guests. Eventually we ran into a co-worker of my father’s named Harry. There’s a reason that I know his name.

He looked down at us with a gentle smile. “Whaddya got there?” he asked me.

I stared at my companion and held him forward for observation, but apparently Harry’s vision was a little hazy beyond the limits of his reach, so he extended his hand and inquired, “Can I see it?”

I looked at the gingerbread man and then back to Harry. If my chaperone could speak, he probably would have advised against this action. Even a cookie could have read the now mischievous smile creasing Harry’s face.

Being slightly less intelligent than a snack, I smiled up at Harry and handed him my gingerbread man. His grin grew more devilish; mine shrank in response. With a crocodilian chomp, Harry swiftly and suddenly deprived the defenseless cookie of its cranium. My mouth dropped open, but the next sound didn’t come from me. It didn’t come from Harry. It came from across the room and it’s the reason I know the name of the gingerbread assassin. It was my mother’s voice, flying towards my tormentor like a furious arrow –

“HAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Harry never again entered within the four walls of our home. I suspect he never again came within four miles of our town. My mother was his judge, jury, and – if he dared cross her child again – she was fully willing to be executioner. Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned, but a mother pissed must be a close second.

There’s a reason I love my mother.

****

The pattern repeats with the removal of my wisdom teeth. It may be the best thing that ever happened to me.

In retrospect, it seems that a strange and wonderful conspiracy was at work. I had been hired as a counselor at a local summer camp. Upon accepting the position, I had been informed that I would be receiving a packet of information that would include details on an upcoming orientation session. A few weeks passed. On the Monday prior to the beginning of camp, I received a call from my new boss asking me to come to his office. When I arrived, he sternly questioned my absence from the previous weekend’s orientation. I responded that I had not been notified; I had not received the promised packet in the mail. He looked at me skeptically and paused to deeply and dramatically fill his lungs.

Just before that air was unleashed in an employment-ending harangue, an assistant walked in with a familiar package. It was my orientation materials, contained in an envelope carrying a stamp and my name, but no address. All was forgiven. That concern evaporated. Unfortunately for me, a new one emerged – in seven days I was going to be piloting a squadron of twenty kids without a map or any whisper of which way to go.

My lack of training was compounded by another problem – my wisdom teeth were removed on Thursday, only four days prior to the beginning of camp. The procedure was successful, but one of the teeth proved particularly stubborn and caused an unusual amount of swelling and soreness. As a result, when the calendar flipped to the following Monday, I found speaking to be a highly uncomfortable exercise. Screaming was out of the question.

So on that sweltering June morning, I had twenty kids, no voice, and no clue. But one of the numerous ways in which I have been fortunate over the course of my days is that a great number of guardian angels have appeared in my life just when I needed them most. Once when my sister asked me why I celebrate Christmas, as I am highly skeptical of organized religion, I explained that it was the time of year when I was grateful for my angels. If any is first among them, this is the girl.

I remember where we were standing when we first met. I was in a hallway near the camp directors’ office. I was distracted by my anxiety and my swollen jaw, but I when I looked up, I found her smiling at me. It worked then and it’s worked every smile since – my tense glare relaxed and I smiled back at her. She chirped, “I’m Katie – I’m gonna be your C.I.T.”

I don’t remember if I understood what a C.I.T. was at the time – I can tell you now that it stands for Counselor-in-Training and our titles should have been reversed – and I don’t remember too many details about that day. I remember feeling foolish early and often. I remember asking Katie which was the best way to get the kids to the pool and her eyes meeting mine with a look that said, “You don’t even know that?” But I remember her then patiently steering me to where I was supposed to be. I remember being in awe of her unflagging energy and her engaging sense of humor – she never stopped and I never stopped laughing. What does it say that it was probably one of the most stressful days of my life to that point and nearly all that I remember is laughing?

Is there a better gift?

When I got home, I was exhausted from the stress, exhausted from the heat, and exhausted from chasing kids around all day. I walked into the family room of my parents’ home. I didn’t bother with the couch. I simply collapsed on the floor, arms and legs splayed as if creating an indoor snow angel. I finally summoned the will to speak and announced to my parents:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfCWYAmHyFI

Wait a minute. Sorry, that was William Wallace. I get the two of us confused sometimes. Actually that was a chipmunk. I get the two of us confused sometimes, too. As rare as what I actually said was, it might as well have been a screaming chipmunk with a soundtrack and a Scottish accent. My parents had never heard me say it before, and they’ve never heard me say it since. What I actually declared was:

“I love this girl!”

In one way or another, I have since the day I met her. In one way or another, I suspect I always will.

****

I do not believe that anything is inevitable.

I know that it is possible that when Harry decapitated my gingerbread companion, it could’ve escaped the notice of my parents. I could have cried and screamed while a circle of adults laughed and pointed. I could have run sobbing from the room until I found a bedroom or a closet or just a quiet corner. I suspect that my ability to trust unfamiliar people was severely damaged that day; there’s no reason that my faith in my parents couldn’t have suffered, too.

I know that it is possible that I could have properly received the camp orientation materials and attended the weekend retreat where the basics of camp were explained and the camaraderie among counselors created. The removal of my wisdom teeth could have – and should have – been scheduled for another time. I could have been assigned to another group with another set of counselors. I would have never been forced to trust Katie as completely as I did from the very beginning. That summer could have passed with us only being vaguely aware of each other. There’s no reason that we had to become anything other than co-workers.

I know that I should’ve missed those free throws. If I had, I might have found myself alone on the bench, head buried in my hands while my mother set fire to the film. My teammates would’ve been consoled by their separate families, rather than congregating around me in celebration. I do not possess any special aptitude for the game – no particular physical gift would have recommended me to basketball. I would’ve been better suited to soccer, tennis, gymnastics, baseball – I would’ve been better at just about any other physical endeavor. There’s no reason it had to be basketball.

The lesson revealed by these experiences is that the real estate of my heart is not rented. It is owned. Once someone or something possesses a piece of it, it is theirs for as long as that heart beats. For better or worse, it is simply the way that I am constructed. I love for a lifetime. The pattern of these three moments is that from those points forward, I never questioned my affection for those three things. It grew, it changed, it evolved – whether I wanted it to or not – but it never wavered. You can doubt whether they possessed the beauty that I perceived in them. You can suggest that those brilliant moments only blinded me to their faults. You might even get me to understand your perspective. But you won’t get me to change mine – not on them. Such is the power of faith.

So when you look at that little boy with his trophy, laughing with his teammates, see it for what it really is. That boy is hooked. That boy is addicted.

Look again at that smile.

That boy is in love.

****

4. Wipe it off

Bobby Cremins was beaming. He was entering his first season as head coach of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, whose record in Atlantic Coast Conference play over the previous two years had been 1-27. There wasn’t much optimism floating around the athletic department office in those early days, but Cremins had just looked up from his desk to witness the rarest of occurrences during his first year – someone was in the office looking for tickets. The visitor returned his warm smile. He didn’t have the heart to tell Cremins that he was an alumnus of the Yellow Jackets’ opponent.

My father was purchasing tickets for the first sporting event I ever attended. The chilly winter weather, the Yellow Jackets’ meager prospects, and the location of the off-campus arena combined to limit the audience for the home team and allow us some terrific seats. My father recalls a play directly in front of us when a scrawny, 18-year-old freshman elevated for a turnaround jumper. He marveled at how the youngster simply kept rising and rising. I remember flipping to the freshman’s page near the back of the media guide. It listed him at 6’5” and 189 pounds. It noted that he was a graduate of Laney High School. It further revealed that “Mike” liked video games and ping pong. That media guide was the last place I ever saw him referred to as “Mike”.

Two months later, he was doing this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suuy_tgOjo

Two years later, in a possible coincidence that boded well for Nike, I had a video game system and a ping-pong table. But I was about to imitate my hero in a much more memorable way. The only difference was that Michael Jordan was a young Michelangelo offering the first strokes of the Sistine Chapel. I was a child with crayons in a dark room and no ladder. The only means of reaching the ceiling was just to throw the box of crayons as hard as I could and hope to get very, very lucky.

****

I was playing in the first championship game of my life. March 3, 1984. Yeah, that’s right, I remember the date.

There were a number of unusual circumstances to this game. My father was out of town on a business trip, so my mother had borrowed a neighbor’s video camera to make this the first game of my career recorded on film. My best friend, Seth, was playing for the opposition. From the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” department, the miniature locomotive named J.J. was now my teammate. It was also the conclusion of the only basketball season that I was coached by a woman. As a result of a connection she had to New Mexico, our team also carried the most obscure nickname of my childhood squads – the Lobos. Based on the improbable sequence of events that unfolded, it would have been appropriate to have found a wolf outside the rec center howling at a full moon.

While J.J. and I were both capable of contributing, our best player that year was our starting center, Carl. He played his best game of the season in the title tilt, scoring twenty-three points. By himself, Carl was trailing by two points in the last minute of the contest. Unfortunately, the rest of our team had only offered three points to the cause, so we held a slender 26-25 lead with seconds to play. As the last ticks slipped from the scoreboard, a tiny but lightning-quick point guard named Deon penetrated down the lane and gently floated a shot through the net. Three seconds remained.

They started dancing. We hung our heads in despair. With the amount of time on the clock and the level of talent on the floor, the game was effectively over. We called a timeout more out of reflex than hope. In a great credit to our coach, she huddled us together and gave us a plan. She reminded us of one of the rule modifications for our league of third graders: no defense was permitted in the backcourt. As a result, our coach instructed one of the players to roll the ball from beneath our opponent’s basket to near mid-court. I was to pick up the ball, dribble it once, and then heave it in the direction of our basket.

While the rims in this league were lowered from the standard ten feet to a more accommodating eight feet, the likelihood of me throwing in a half-court shot at this stage of my career was about the same as Michael Jordan walking through the door to attempt the shot for me. Even Jordan’s odds of hitting this shot would have been extremely poor. But it was the best we could do. The ball was bowled to mid-court. I picked it up, took a single dribble, and flung the ball as hard as I could. It angrily crashed into the backboard like sumo wrestler with a grudge and bounded back towards me like a faithful boomerang. If I had thrown a baseball instead of a basketball, the glass would have shattered and the backboard on the other end of the floor might have cracked out of sympathy.

Shockingly, the next sound wasn’t glass breaking or a buzzer. It was a whistle. In an act of colossal stupidity, Deon had leapt towards me as I released the ball and grazed my forearm. In an act of colossal sympathy, the referee called a foul.

One second on the clock. Down by one. Two shots – make one to tie, drill two for the title.

****

There are two things that I’ve done on a basketball court that I’ve never seen or heard of anyone else doing. Both were far from intentional. The second is dunking a basketball with my feet. Often when I was waiting for a game on a playground in high school, I would stand a few steps to the side of the free throw line, toss the ball up in the air so that it would hit a few feet in front of the basket and bounce near the rim. I would time my steps and my leap so that I reached the peak of the jump (a little above the rim) at the same time as the ball. It was rarely successful, but occasionally I’d actually be able to dunk the ball in this manner.

On one particular occasion, I dramatically underthrew the toss so that the ball was low and far from the basket when I went up to the rim. It was a good jump, though, so I grabbed the rim with two hands and faced back towards the ball. Realizing that it was still coming toward me, I caught it between my feet, then curled them up above the rim and dropped the ball through the hoop. I was laughing hysterically at myself by the time I returned to the ground. I’m an idiot – and an easily amused one.

As absurd as that was, it doesn’t compare to my other unique basketball experience. The only problem is that I don’t have any memory of it.

I would like to be able to tell you what was racing through my mind, or how the basketball felt in my hand, or how the shots looked from the foul line. In stark contrast to the other details I can recall from that night, I don’t remember anything about those two shots. Based on what happened next, it’s entirely possible that I blacked out after I was fouled.

I can only figure that my half-court assault had the same effect on the backboard as a good brushback pitch in baseball. It sucked all of the courage out of the glass. So when I flung two consecutive missiles directly off its heart, rather than reflect them back to me at the free throw line, the beaten backboard submissively dropped them into the basket.

I banked ‘em both. 28-27.

****

In family billiards games, whenever a lucky shot is pocketed, the victimized opponent will usually intone disdainfully, “Wipe it off!” – suggesting that the shot just struck was pulled out of the shooter’s ass and the cue needs to be cleaned. Never in the history of sports has this line been more appropriate than with respect to those two free throws. If the figurative were literal, the amount of toilet paper necessary to dispose of that much crap would have filled the state of Georgia.

In pool, a double banker can be a demonstration of skill or luck. In basketball, it can’t be anything other than the latter. No one ever aims for the backboard on a free throw. Ever. Further, it would be one thing to make one shot in this fashion. You would think that any basketball player – even a third-grader – would adjust a bit after shooting a shot about two feet longer than he intended. But the second shot crashed off the glass just as firmly as the first. It was obvious that I choked. I’d never shot a basketball with any kind of pressure on me and I had no idea how to handle it. It just so happened that there was a backboard there.

I cannot imagine losing a championship game in this way – a glorious finish ruined by an absurd foul call followed by a ridiculous and entirely unintended shooting stunt. It was sudden. It was unjust. It was cruel. Sports can be that way sometimes.

But Seth was gracious the next day in class. He and I passed a scrap of paper in class naming our MVPs for the game. I wrote down his name and objectively thought he was the best player on his team. Despite Carl’s 23-point performance, Seth wrote down my name. It wasn’t because he was my best friend.

In that document lies the magic of the game-winner.

****

3. Come to the ball

My first hoops lesson was spoken aloud by my father and mashed into my memory by a speedy seven-year-old named J.J. Several of the fundamental principles that I’ve taken from the game can be traced to a single seed that they planted a quarter century ago.

It was the end of one of the first practices of my first season of organized sports. After running an occasionally attentive group of second-graders through the most rudimentary of drills, our coach provided us a single play. This one design was to be the blueprint for our movements on the offensive end of the floor. My role was to start near the baseline, then come off of a screen to the top of the key. As I arrived, a player on the opposite wing was to pass me the ball.

I do not remember what I was supposed to do with the ball once I caught it. In retrospect, I think the play was designed to give me the ball, a little bit of space, and a running start towards the basket. I was the offense on that team. In a possibly related story, we went 0-9 that year. I specifically remember losing one game 16-2. I had the two.

(Rule #1: if I’m the best you’ve got, then what you’ve got is trouble.)

Having equipped us for competition, the coach then organized a brief scrimmage against another team for the last few minutes of practice. We had the ball. In a bold tactical decision, we ran our one play. Given the sequence of events that ensued, I imagine it wasn’t the first time our opponents – specifically J.J. – had seen it.

As I curled around the screen, J.J. anticipated the pass and sprinted towards the point where the ball and I had planned to meet. Seeing his momentum and fearing a collision, I stopped and hoped for the ball to elude his grasp and travel safely to me. The basketball foolishly continued on its straight path (as balls in flight are known to do). As a result, J.J. easily intercepted the pass and headed to the other end of the floor for a lay-up.

My father, who had arrived to take me home from practice, yelled at me from the sideline, “You’ve got to come to the ball!”

He had seen my hesitation and recognized that I had to shorten the distance of the pass to prevent the defender from disrupting the play. The only way to do that was to continue running in the direction of the passer until I caught the ball. The play depended on that decisive action. After rattling through our rolodex of options, we ran the play again. I sprinted off the screen. The pass was thrown. Without hesitation, J.J. again flew towards the ball. I ran as hard as I could. I got to the ball first. Then came the part that I hadn’t been told.

J.J. flattened me. Like a penny on train tracks.

My father had led his little horse to the proverbial water. It just turned out that the water was a tidal wave. Like a football free safety exploding towards an exposed wide receiver, J.J. knocked me into the air – it was one of those hits where I actually had time to think, “Hey, that ground thing should have been here by n…,” before I actually became one with the floor near the center circle. After running a quick inventory of body parts, I glared up from the ground in the direction of my father. He looked back at me. He had several choices.

He could have explained the value of individual sacrifice for the good of the whole – “taking one for the team” – or perhaps the importance of doing the right thing in the face of danger, pain, and suffering. By absorbing that punishment and drawing a foul call, I retained possession of the ball for my team. In a normal game, it is possible that I would have earned free throws and the opportunity to score two uncontested points – no small matter for a team that once tallied that amount over the course of an entire game.

He also could have explained the significance of learning how to fall down and how to get back up. At this point I’ve been knocked out of the sky in more ways than I can count. I’ve been flipped forward, backward, and sideways – I even flipped over a chain-link fence once. I’ve run into steel poles, brick walls, and 300-pound kids that might as well have been brick walls. That’s only the literal falls; the figurative ones have been harder. In both categories, there’s a value in knowing how to land and how to rise again. There may be no more important ability. This was my first time. My father could’ve noted that I should get used to it.

He further could have explained the importance of the little things. In the game of basketball, as in most things, the glory is in the spectacular – the dunk, the no-look pass, the killer crossover – but the simple is both more necessary and more significant. Everything in those two plays is the same – the design of our play, the actions of my teammates, the defense, J.J. sprinting towards the ball – except for one subtle decision. On the first play, I curled a little slower off the screen and faded away from the pass. On the second play, I cut sharply and took a direct path to the ball. One choice results in two points for the opposing team; the other keeps the ball for my team. If someone that didn’t understand the game saw only one of the two plays, they probably would have thought that the version they saw was inevitable. Nothing is inevitable. The subtle decision made the difference. There are a thousand little moments like that in a game, any one of which might possibly decide the outcome.

As a result, he could have continued, there is a simple lesson in what just happened to you, son: make the play in front of you. No matter how small, no matter how subtle – if you have the ability to make a positive contribution, you do it. Don’t worry about pacing yourself. Don’t worry about getting hurt. Don’t quit. Play as hard as you can, as long as you can, then walk off the court with no regrets about the things you could have tried to do. Make the play in front of you.

In a word: hustle.

He could have said all of those things, but I wouldn’t have understood any of them. The deeper truths are a bit beyond a seven-year-old’s understanding, particularly one still not yet in full command of his senses. So he looked back at me and shrugged with a look that said, “Sorry. It happens. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

I continued to glare at my father as if he had knocked me over. It is one of the patterns of my childhood: I did what my parents told me, sometimes begrudgingly, and that trust usually led me to truth.

Some lessons take longer than others. All of them have to start somewhere. Most of them have to be repeated. Many of them you have to learn for yourself. A few of them have to be learned at the wrong end of a train. One of them I’ve held on to since that day.

Always come to the ball.

****

2. Hi Mom!

"The Mississipi's mighty
But it starts in Minnesota,
At a place where you could walk across
With five steps down...."

– Emily Saliers

The beginning is captured in the grainy, flickering images of a home movie taken on Christmas Day. On the shaggy carpet of a family room in Massachusetts, a small Fisher-Price basketball hoop sits across from a two-year-old boy. The plastic basket is perhaps 30 inches in height, with a small lever inside the hoop that triggers a bell whenever the ball finds its home inside the rim. Every successful shot earns a small yelp of approval, sounding like an order ready for pick up at a greasy restaurant. The movie is silent, but the miniature basket's effect on the miniature boy is obvious. As the boy stands waiting approximately four feet from the rim, the father softly places a plastic ball in his son's hands. The little boy, like a bull charging a drunken matador, speeds toward the basket, throwing the ball through the rim with sufficient force to cause the small structure to teeter backwards. As the father reaches out to steady both boy and basket, you can easily imagine the bell.

Ding!

Father and son laugh gleefully, as the father picks up his son and again places him four feet from the basket. The father retrieves the ball and hands it to the son. The boy looks at the ball. He looks at the basket. Again, the bull charges.

Ding!

The battling parties are returned to their starting positions. The father smoothly flicks his wrist, suggesting to the son that perhaps he might want to arc the ball gently towards the wounded basket. The boy smiles. He is not interested in gentle. The bull charges.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

****

As this introspection proceeds, just as in the home movie, my father will often have a central role in the picture. He introduced me to the game I would play, the teams I would follow, and the players I would idolize. The influence of my mother will be less often on display, but it is equally essential to the story. Therefore, before going any further, the person behind the camera on that Christmas Day should be recognized.

****

In the fall of 1966, a few months after the commencement of their courtship, my father asked my mother what she wanted out of life. Without hesitation or qualification, she responded, “I want to raise good kids and have a good family.”

Like most beginnings, it seemed simple enough at the time.

They became a family of two in June 1967, and my mother probably would’ve been interested in increasing that number immediately. But my father was heading to graduate school in Boston and, after spending her entire life in Virginia, she was going with him. They calculated that a baby would have to wait a couple of years.

The equations of life are quickly altered. Sometimes the heavens fall, sometimes a pen softly falls on paper, and sometimes they combine to erase everything on the page. The Vietnam War had not directly touched my parents’ lives, as my father had been granted a graduate student deferment. But in February 1968, shortly after the Tet Offensive, that exemption was rescinded. Now that my father was eligible for service, my parents traveled to the local draft board to determine his position among potential draftees. The secretary at the office walked to the filing cabinet and asked his name. Receiving that information, she was able to quickly report my father’s position in line: first.

Completion of graduate school would have to wait. The attempts to expand the family would not. By the spring of 1969, my mother learned she was pregnant with her first child, her older sister was pregnant with her second, and her husband had been assigned to an Army base in Texas. During their long drive southwest, she suffered a miscarriage. The hopes of a household of three dissolved into the realization that she would soon be sending her husband to the other side of the world. But the wife of a soldier is a soldier, too – drive on.

After a year in the hallucination-inducing Texas heat, she sent him to Saigon. It is one thing to be patient, another to be stubborn, and entirely another to live with the daily fear that you’ve seen a loved one for the last time. But nine months of uncertainty later, he returned home safely. He completed his graduate work the following year. Finally, she had all of the pieces in place – a good husband, a healthy income, a happy home – and they continued the mission of building a family.

So they tried. She couldn’t conceive. Doctors offered rounds and rounds of tests and procedures, but no answers. Years passed. While she had been traveling on a ping-pong tour of the United States – Virginia to Massachusetts to Virginia to Texas to Virginia to Massachusetts and now to California – each of her sisters had been home in Virginia, each giving birth to two healthy children of their own. Her older sister’s pregnancy from 1969 had ended with a lovely daughter, who was now four years old. She’d been holding on to this dream for seven years since her wedding, and in slightly less intense form for several years before that. I don’t know how many nights she laid awake wondering if she’d ever have the chance to have her own children, but I imagine it was more than a few.

She persevered. After another series of tests, a doctor in California prescribed fertility drugs, which finally allowed her to conceive another child. She went into labor on the west coast while her husband was on a business trip back in Boston, adding a final challenging wrinkle to her odyssey of patience, war, failure, fear and – above all else – hope. After trying so hard for seven years, she finally delivered me.

My experience has been that if you chase a goal over so many years, with so many doubts, and through so many obstacles, it seems to make you cherish it that much more. It may start as a trickle in Minnesota, but by the time it is realized, it is a force of nature.

Do you know what it’s like to be treated like a dream come true? I do.

****

When my father and I watched sporting events during my childhood, especially during the1980s, there was an epidemic of male athletes catching the eye of a sideline camera and screaming, “Hi Mom!” My dad used to always ask, “How come nobody ever says, ‘Hi Dad!’”

Part of the reason might have been avoidance of the near-certain guilt trip – once one guy had done it, if another didn’t, the first thing he’d hear when he next visited his mother was, “How come you didn’t say ‘hi’ to me?” Part of the reason may be because some of them didn’t have fathers worth mentioning on national television or they didn’t know their fathers at all. But for the ones with great fathers, I imagine that the fathers and sons had built their relationships by following box scores in the paper, recounting the performances of their favorite players and teams, diagramming plays together in little league contests, and bonding in a thousand other different ways through sports. For the father, the mere participation of the son in the arena of their ambitions was both achievement and acknowledgment.

For the mother, it was mostly just another chance that her baby might get hurt. “Hi Mom!” was, therefore, the easiest means of reassuring the mother that the son was safe and happy, which is the mother’s only measuring stick. She didn’t cook him meals, drive him to practice, console him in sadness and celebrate him in success because she wanted him to be a world-class athlete. She did all of those things because she wanted him to be happy. (It is possible that this is just my mother and not all mothers.) “Hi Mom!” was the necessary nod to the person whose influence was both less obvious and equally important.

Anybody who sees me with my parents for the first time will almost immediately say, “You look just like your father.” It is true and I am proud of it. I walk like him, talk like him, and (try to) think like him. Almost no one looks close enough to see that many of my features actually originate with my mother, both in my appearance – the nose and chin, among others, are hers – and in personality. My father is the model for everything that I am. My mother is the sculptor – and more than a little of the artist’s soul is in her work.

So if any of what you’re about to read indicates fierce perseverance or simple stubbornness, I have two words for you:

Hi Mom!

****