Were You Good at Sports?
We both know I really shouldn't have been playing basketball. I surely wasn't tall. Nor particularly agile, plus my hustle and flow was that of a bat drunk on elderberries.
But my friends played and so I practiced layups, with more of a skip than a dribble.
Two years later, I eventually made it into an actual game, late in the season, with the winner already decided.
My weakness was obvious, and the other team started setting vicious picks, leaving me stumbling and cheek-first into some guard's sweaty armpit over, over and over.
One shout could be heard over the din of the crowd, "Get him out of there, get him out of there!" over and over and over ... and over.
Turns out it was my guidance counselor - sports an education all its own.
My brother was a star swimmer of sorts, so Coach Foley figured DNA would make me a natural for the Weston High School Swim Team. I practiced mostly pot smoking and donkeying around until acquiescing in junior year. "So long as I don't have to swim the 500-yard freestyle," I said, shaking his hand.
Coach Foley let my teammates do the work. They hazed me into that very race, where I was disqualified on the final turn for a breaststroke-style flutter kick. Prophetic, maybe, as a year later I was ranked sixth in the state for the 50-yard breaststroke.
We all proudly wore t-shirts,
"Breast Stroking is Fun."
Ahh, the '80s.
At Camp Samoset, many years before, I was mostly shy when it came to sports, deemed inadequate by the raglan-tee wearing, short-short strutting, knee-high sock prancing jocks and bullies.
They slapped the tetherball in an arc over my head, left my bow without arrows and reluctantly sent me to play left field.
Counselor Keith, unprompted, pulled me aside one afternoon offering, "You're really good at Frisbee."
A natural athlete, he said.
I held onto that for years, the speck of a kernel of a seed of confidence that blossomed silently and slowly.
I didn't swim a lick in college, instead opting to join a group of stoners and rebels to self-fund a division nine Ultimate Frisbee team. And so The Wombats were born, Skidmore's version of a traveling rugby crew, except we didn't have cauliflower ears or muscles - and we rarely left campus for games.
T-shirts again, these offering simply, 'The Wombats,' in a font reserved mostly for Halloween.
Scary or not, twenty-six years later some kids from Skidmore's Wombats reached out to shake me down for a donation, word is you may be responsible, so how about funding our jerseys?
Recently, my friend Jim invited me to play golf - he's mostly retired and golfs about as often as I use the bathroom.
"I hardly play and mostly suck," I counseled, "won't be fun for anyone."
No matter, he pestered for months, all skill levels welcomed.
When I showed up the twosome had become a foursome, and one of the other players was an honest-to-goodness professional rugby player. He loomed at 6' 4", with the build of a bricklayer, charm that could talk white off rice and an accent that made leprechauns appear.
Mr. Rugby's game was so good that he couldn't use a driver to tee off, instead opting for a 7 iron so the ball didn't go too straight or too far, I shît you not.
Anyway, I played as expected, shanking balls into neighboring fairways, acutely aware I was wearing long pants while everyone else wore shorts, and mostly just sweating through my undies.
I played tennis for a while, which was cool, especially when I realized my trainer was banging one of the other trainers in the ball shed before anyone else arrived.
At the ripe age of forty I ran for the first time since high school. I can't say this was intentional - rather it was an accidental jog down a hill, loping in Dad-jeans and a billowy button-down dress shirt. I liked the feel of the wind in my hair, and proudly thought I looked all Chariots of Fire.
Soon I ran a mile along the Charles, then 5Ks followed, and a half marathon here or there, now four miles three days a week, buffered by LuLu shorts and anti-chafing cream on my nipples.
You gotta let me know when they begin letting all of us snort GLP-1s, but in the meantime, I'll keep lifting weights a few mornings a week, with a trainer who urges me on with a 32-pack of abs and biceps shaped like traffic cones, reminding me that someday, somehow, I'll get in good enough shape to become excellent at any sport I want.