Now, a bit of back story is required for this to really make sense. When I was fourteen I moved to America for a year, where I lived with some family friends and I attended a local high school. I was not a good student. I'm Scottish: we have a good education system but we're a nation of terrible students. In Scotland I was average bad, but in America I was exceptionally bad. Super bad maybe.
From what I can remember of my year in an American high school, I recall that the American education system is not stellar, but they are a nation (or maybe this is exclusive to the State of Utah) of studious students who want to learn. I was not ready for this. I was a terrible student. After three months of acting out in every class finally several of my teachers had had enough of me. I was evicted (once, famously, for making pirate noises) and I was punished. They don't mess around over there. As punishment I was put on school clean up duty. It was sorta like detention, except they made you scrub toilets and mop floors, etc. so that they could hire fewer janitors. I was stuck at Gulag High, 5'000 miles away from home.
I became an amazing cleaner. I would get my mopping and scrubbing and snow shoveling (this was Utah in the winter time!) super quickly, and I was left with three free periods during the day. (Yes, I was a student who had three classes a day, I was evicted from 50% of my scheduled classes). I needed something to fill my time. I needed something special. After two days of wandering around aimlessly like a reject ghost from Hogwarts I figured out that I already had what I was looking for to fill my time. I had basketball.
I became mildly obsessed with basketball when I arrived in Utah. I was lucky enough to live three miles away from the University of Utah and more luckily still, I acquired football and basketball season tickets and I attended every game. I loved football! But basketball captured my heart. It became my first love (I was fourteen and hadn't yet come into my own as a teenage lion, a foreign predator who preyed on the hearts of the neighborhood girls he was befriended). (This never happened, I didn't get my first girlfriend until I was sixteen and living with my aunt back in Scotland). Really I was just a loser teen who became addicted to a sport. Like millions of others worldwide. Only I had a cool accent.
Our neighbors across the street had two sons roughly my age, and one son was an excellent basketball player (who only played in his back yard), so everyday after school I would go over to their backyard and play on the small cement court. For hours. This was all I did. No school work. No studying. No TV (except King of Queens every night at 9). Nothing. All I did was play basketball. And since I did this at home everyday, it made perfect sense logically to do the same thing for two-hour long periods every day in the schools empty gymnasium.
I became pretty good. Good enough to be offered a spot on the school team. Now, I was a rebellious teen who didn't want to conform to what anyone wanted from me. I said no. Actually I told the coach to go screw himself (he was also in charge of clean up duty), I was a bad-ass. I read Tolstoy at lunch time and fought in the parking lot (I was so freaking cool). I had better things to do. Instead of playing in a structured league I played on the street! Eventually I considered playing for the team the following season...but my family showed up in mid-April and promptly dragged me home; away from clean up duty, away from my new friends and away from basketball.
I came home to find a hoop installed above the garage that adjoins our house (a kind of peace making gift) and again the cycle continued. All I did was play basketball. No studying. No anything else. It drove my family mad. It served me well in P.E. though, I got an A for basketball (the only A that I ever got! IN YOUR FACE FAMILY!) I continued to play until maybe two or three years ago but then, as it's prone to do, life got in the way.
Since I was fourteen I have been proud of my basketball ability. Until today. Today my body betrayed me. My body was Fredo, I was Michael. I can no longer play basketball like I used to. Today while attempting to shoot free throws (and failing like Shaq from the line) I probably ended up looking like Matt Saracen did when Coach Taylor replaced him with Voodoo Tatum as the Panthers QB-1.
I probably looked a little something like this:
Or maybe it was maybe more like this:
I can't remember the face I made; regardless of how my facial muscles contracted it was a sad day. My body let me down. It betrayed me...
...At first anyway.
There was some hope, after loosening up and letting go of the frustration that was building up, I was able to shoot a respectable 78% from the field. (Yes, I worked out my free throw percentage; sometimes I just like to pretend I'm Ray Allen, okay!) I'm not gonna be starting for the Celtics or the Lakers or anyone else any time soon (although, if Charlotte need a PG, I'm free! $4 mill is the price when the price is right; think about it Michael). But, it's a start.
I just want to be able to stand on court again and not look like a sweating idiot. Sweating's OK, but only when your doing something worth sweating over, and tonight sadly my performance was not sweat-worthy. I taste like a salty biscuit.
But there was hope, sorta. I may taste like a salty biscuit, but I have achieved something. It may just be something little, but it's something nonetheless.
Initially my body may have let me down, and I'm disappointed about this. But, in the end after some perseverance and some serious focus (I was like Einstein solving complex-quadratics up in that 'mutha...) I was able to see a small part of the ability I used to have, return.
I should mention that I played for four solid hours trying to master my jumper, my three point shot and my foul shot. I'm 5'7, so I'm not really a drive to the basket kinda guy, but my lay up has remained surprisingly consistent. After four hours of sweating like a desert camel and swearing under my breath like a trooper under fire I saw something. I saw a little bit of skill. Not much, but some. A grain of sand on a dirty beach. Small, but existent. And for me, after the shock of being betrayed by my own body, it was enough to fend off the comfort eating.
I will practice. I will sweat. I will become a golden god. I will not comfort eat.
My body betrayed me tonight, but I'll be damned if I don't show it whose boss.
"You disappoint me Fredo..." but not for long. Not for long.
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