My earliest memories of my father, my only memories of when he was still married to my mother, are of him playing basketball with his insurance company's team.
Before and after the divorce, Dad would bring my brother Dan and I to the park for practices and games, and we would play around in the Hammond Park gym, which is five minutes away from where I work now, until his practice ended. Being athletic, Dan eventually took to the sport, making baskets constantly from around the time he was riding his bike - in fourth grade.
Of course, because he could do it when I - the disabled sissy who hated going outside - couldn't and he was my "little" brother, I envied him. I wanted to be able to do it. Well enough, at least, to be included by him and my dad. Well enough so that I wouldn't be bored and sitting around every other week during practices at that gym, hoping against hope that my dad would let me have a book or that someone else would bring a child so that I could have someone, anyone to talk to.
When I was a kid, I thought my little brother took joy in torturing me. He'd beat me up. He'd steal my bookbag and hide it around the house. When I was 12, we were visiting a skyscraper in Chicago, and he walked me to the edge of the roof and then, as I was looking over the edge, grabbed me by the feet and lifted me until my stomach fluttered, and I screamed.
Anyway, about the basketball - because this is turning into a badly written story about my brother's childhood bouts with sadism, and it wasn't supposed to - I would try to practice and play ball with my brother at that gym. The only times I would make a basket would involve being lifted onto my father's shoulders.
At my mom's house, I stayed inside when they put up the basketball hoop in the driveway. When I tried practicing there, I couldn't do it, even though my brother and stepbrother were great at it. Or, um, compared to me, they were great at it. Around the time we got the basketball hoop at home, I got my first VCR and started collecting videos.
P.E. class was terrible for me in middle school. I wasn't particularly interested in, you know, doing anything. I resented it, actually. People would make allowances for my disability that I didn't ask them to make, and it would make me feel different, something I didn't feel in other classes.
In fifth grade, when I was 11, I wasn't the last picked for teams in class, but that was only because a kid named Jamie was sullen, poor and didn't have proper gym clothes. And because one of the girls had a perpetual doctor's excuse that let her sit out that period. (When I could sneak away from the day's activity, I would go sit and talk with those kids. They were lucky, as I saw it.)
Everyone in the two classes in the gym that period, though, had to participate from time to time in a game the teachers, Mr. Gamble and Ms. Savage, invented called "Basketball Relay."
All the students would stand in line, and they'd put their foot up on the bleachers while standing on the floor, creating a tunnel out of legs. The person at the front of the line would take a basketball, dribble the ball to one end of the gym and make the basket, then they would go to the other end of the gym and make that basket. Then, they would rejoin the end of the line and roll the ball through the tunnel of everyone's legs until it reached the front person in line, who would do the same thing.
The winning team would make it all the way through the line first.
When this game was introduced in class, of course, I protested. I protested because I couldn't lift my leg up to the bleachers for a long period of time without losing my balance. I protested that I didn't know how to dribble. And I protested to Ms. Savage that I couldn't shoot a successful basket. When she told me that I just needed to try harder, I scoffed that I had tried. Over and over.
"I can't do it," I told her. "I can't do it, and I don't want to be responsible for my team losing all the time because of that."
The game started anyway, and I was, as I had predicted, terrible at it. I dribbled until the ball got away from me. I ran until I quickly ran out of breath. I shot at the basket until the time on the scoreboard ran out.
My team, of course, resented me. They hated that the structure of the game required that everyone participate.
I apologized to everyone in class, telling them that I was personally sorry that they made me take part in P.E. class. But the able-bodied boys didn't care. They just grumbled about the fact I had to play and tried to assure they didn't pick me for their teams.
I apologized and complained more to the teachers, particularly Ms. Savage. She was sweet to me, usually, but there was nothing she could do.
For some reason, "basketball relay" became a favorite activity of the teachers, though. On other days, they made us play it three or four times. I would try to sit out as often as possible. Sometimes, after three unsuccessful shots, they'd let you move forward so that the game didn't completely stall for one person, and I'd get to do that.
The more I practiced, the more it didn't work. Occasionally, I'd get to hit the rim. I'd try over and over. No one, not even cute, nice boys like Todd Schuelke or Sam Whiting, could help me.
People even suggested the unflattering "Granny Shot" technique. You know what I'm talking about. The one where you hold the ball between your legs with both hands and try to throw it up that way. The "Granny Shot" doesn't work. The ball goes over your own head or over the basket and backboard. Trust me. Any basketball player who suggests trying a "Granny Shot" to improve your game is an asshole.
My complete basketball impotence went on for a couple weeks. For me, as a young boy, it felt like an eternity. A humiliating, horrible eternity.
"Do we have to play this EVERYDAY???" I whined to Mr. Gamble and Ms. Savage one day. "I'm HANDICAPPED. Can't we do something I CAN DO?"
They'd just smile and nod, probably labeling me as "Future Gay Boy With Lisp and No Self-Esteem" in their memories.
Something about my attitude must've hit them as unacceptable because, at the start of the next P.E. class, the teachers put me through one of the worst moments of my life ... and one of the best.
The class wouldn't calm down for the beginning of class, while Ms. Savage went to get the cart of basketballs. Mr. Gamble tried calling the roll, but he couldn't because, you know, people like Evan Bennett and I were arguing about Oral Roberts' claims that he'd spoken to God or about how much cooler Bob Dole was than George Bush. (Seriously, I remember talking about that. It was 1987.)
Anyway, because Mr. Gamble couldn't call the roll, he got mad and yelled at the entire class. The class was put on a five-minute silence.
I looked at Ms. Savage's cart of basketballs and sighed, feeling lucky.
"What is it?" Ms. Savage asked.
"I can't do it, anyway," I said to her.
She looked at me, then she pulled Mr. Gamble into a corner for a second.
The class, grumbling despite our forced silence, just watched them, wondering what was up.
When Mr. Gamble walked back, he grabbed a basketball.
Then he looked at me. Then, he looked at the class and announced, "CHANGE OF PLANS ... you're not in quiet time for five minutes anymore."
The class's grumbles took on an upbeat note for a moment.
"YOU'RE IN QUIET TIME UNTIL BENJIE MAKES A BASKET!" Mr. Gamble said aloud, handing me a basketball.
I was NOT happy.
"Huh?" I asked him.
"Hit the court," he told me. I looked at Ms. Savage, the nice one, but I got no reprieve.
"But I can't," I said, pleading.
"Well then, they'll be sitting here for a while," he said to me coldly, pointing to the class.
Other classmates protested.
"HIM???" Todd Schuelke said. "OH GOD ..."
"We're gonna be here ALL DAY," Evan Bennett said, annoyed.
I felt like I was going to throw up.
I felt like I was in some Afterschool Special about teacher harrassment and exploitation of the disabled.
I held the basketball to me, and I stood up. And I walked, slowly, toward the basketball hoop on my left.
I made it to the free throw line before I actually looked back at the bleachers of students. People had their heads in their hands. Others were just shaking their heads in disbelief. Some were glaring at me.
Two classes were being held up, and the burden of that was on me. It didn't feel fair at all.
I'd never done it successfully before.
With all eyes on me, I looked up at the hoop, held the ball up and threw it.
And it bounced off the backboard and missed. People on the stands grunted audibly.
I ran after the ball, grabbed it and looked at Ms. Savage.
"I can't," I mouthed to her.
She just nodded at the basket.
I wanted to cry.
Frustrated, I hurled the ball again at the basket and missed it entirely.
Looking at the stands, people had started to lean back, resigned to the fact that they'd have to sit there the entire class.
"GRANNY SHOT!" someone yelled at me.
"IT DOESN'T WORK," I yelled back.
I wasn't about to do that again.
I looked up again at the hoop and the box on the backboard behind it. I considered how I was holding the ball. I moved closer from the free-throw line.
I looked at where I wanted it to go, and I threw it there.
And I screamed as it went. My eyes followed it. On the rim, then through the net. And, overwhelmed and delighted by it, my scream continued.
I practically doubled-over from the joy, and I heard the thunder on the boards as everyone ran from the stands to embrace me. Ms. Savage and Mr. Gamble running, too.
"Oh my God," I gasped, squealing.
My face was red from yelling, "I did it. I DID IT!"
Ms. Savage was crying when she hugged me.
It was my third shot. I remember that. I'd been through the steps of thinking the goal impossible, giving up on myself, of others giving up on me.
Then, I did it.
Other people do it all the time and had done it in front of me countless times. When I made my first successful basket, though, I felt like I'd done something beyond amazing.
When I got home from school that day, I even called my dad.
At the awards assembly at the end of the school year, Ms. Savage gave me her "Most Improved - P.E." award, and she talked in her speech about how my first basket made her choke up and start crying. She was an amazing teacher.
Thanks to her, I exceeded my own limits, and it was a great moment.
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