Skip to main content

On the Courts

I've been playing a lot more basketball lately. I've always liked to play, but my nagging injuries seem to be disappearing, so I can push my legs a little bit more. Also, I recently stopped for a few weeks, and my jump shot seemed to magically disappear. Vowing that I didn't want this to happen again, I figured I'd make it out to the courts more frequently.

Even if my usual basketball crew doesn't show up, I'll just go shoot around for a bit. It's decent exercise, and I like doing it. However, that means that I don't have to go to the centrally located courts that my basketball friends prefer. If they're not around, I'm free to frequent some of the other courts closer to my house. So I do.

As I've realized, these particular courts seem to attract much more interesting characters. I'm not there to gawk, but my basketball adventures have suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. Heck, sometimes the adventures come to me. Last time I was there, a mentally handicapped teenager who likes to watch by standing on the court approached me. He didn't cause any trouble or anything, but he stood a few feet away and just stared. It was a little unnerving. I actually offered him a chance to shoot the ball, but his guardian said he didn't want to. Still, he meant no harm, so it was fine.

The really amusing part, though, comes when there are groups of people. I was minding my own business when I noticed a teenager shooting around. He seemed to know what he was doing, but he was by himself just shooting some baskets. Eventually, his younger sister and his mom showed up to chat with him for a while. He gave up the ball, and let his mom shoot the ball (his sister was too young). I didn't think much of it, until I noticed that she didn't have sneakers on. No, mom was rocking a pair of wedge heels (side note: finding the proper name for those things was no trivial feat). Still, there she was, dropping in jumpers from the elbow (second side note: knowing that terminology makes me feel slightly better about having to Google "women's heels").

It gets better, though. The son figured that he was sharing the court with a bonafide basketball player, so he asked her to do layup drills with him. If you're not familiar with the motion, a layup involves running at the basket and jumping off of one foot. It's not something I would attempt if I wasn't sure of my balance, or if I didn't trust my ankle to hold up when I landed. I'm guessing the kid didn't entirely realize what he was asking, because I doubt he was trying to get someone hurt. Not surprisingly, the mom deferred.

Still, that's nothing. My absolute favorite scene on the basketball courts involves four older guys who were on an adjacent court one morning. For a while, they were just shooting the ball around. It looked like they were just looking for some exercise, so I didn't think much of it. Suddenly, I heard all sorts of laughter. They had moved on from plain old shots, and they were now standing somewhere around half court. Instead of just throwing the ball as hard as they could, though, they were heaving hook shots. The motion doesn't really give you fine-grain control, so it's usually used when you're relatively close to the basket. These guys knew it, too.

Still, there they were, four guys well past retirement age giggling like school girls while throwing up hook shots from half court. I'm pretty sure they missed every single one of their attempts, but they were having a grand old time. I couldn't help but chuckle when I saw this. I'm fairly sure I've goofed off with my friends in a similar manner before, but not with nearly as much gusto. I'm talking kid-in-a-candy-store levels of enthusiasm and joy. I was actually jealous for a second. Think about it, when's the last time you experienced that much pure, unabashed joy? They were having so much fun that they missed every single shot, and it didn't matter one bit.

So, I've decided on two things as a result of this:

  • If I'm not meeting up with people, I'm going to keep going to these courts. I'm not missing out on any more amusing anecdotes if I can help it.
  • Heaving half court hook shots with some friends after the age of 65 is now on my bucket list.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...