Basketball

So one time in the early 90’s, I was outside a nearby concert arena.  I was there because some local bands were playing on an outside stage at some festival or something.  I really don’t remember the details.  At any rate, my friend and I had gotten there real early, and there was nothing going on yet.  The bands hadn’t even arrived.  There was a smaller building next to the arena, almost like a huge high school gymnasium, and a bunch of other early birds were gathered inside, milling about.  There were about eight basketball backboards and nets about the place, perhaps the local college team practiced here, and some people had picked up basketballs and started shooting hoops.

Now I had always been epically bad at basketball.  I can’t dribble.  I can’t shoot jumpers, I can’t make layups.  I can’t even sink a free throw, even if I shoot the really lame underhand way.  So I’m not sure what made me decide to go grab a ball and start shooting baskets.  Perhaps I was feeling a little too good about myself that morning.

No one was more surprised than me when I made my first shot from about ten feet out.  Then my next one.  Then my next.  I did miss a few here and there, but in the next 20 minutes I probably sank 75% of the shots I made, a couple from what would have been behind the three point line.

Turns out, I was now some kind of idiot savant at basketball, a real life Forrest Gump.

So that week I bought a basketball and for the next eight months or so I would keep it in my trunk and go to playground basketball courts and shoot hoops.  First with my friend Bryan, who pretty much hated it, and even on my own, trying to join in on pickup games when I saw them.

Thing is, I stunk.  I was worse than I had been in high school.  Try as I might, I couldn’t make a basket to save my life.  I looked like an idiot, and other people just laughed at me or stood in shocked amazement and felt embarrassed for me.  Whatever magic I had that morning in the gym was long gone.  Finally, I just accepted the fact that it was an aberration and I would never be good at basketball again.

So if you were having some really tough time of it one Saturday morning in 1991, and however hard you prayed, God didn’t answer or help you out, it wasn’t your fault.  He was busy at some gymnasium, setting some moron up for an cruel, eight month long practical joke.