It’s Not GETTING Old That I Mind
Getting old is okay. It’s necessary, actually, considering the alternative.
But feeling old. Acting old. That…that I don’t like.
I play basketball. Of all the optional activities in life (that is, leaving out stuff like breathing and eating), I think I’ve done more of that than almost anything else, up there with reading and writing. I really can’t remember a time when I wasn’t playing; my parents tell me that almost as soon as I could walk I took a ball and shot it at a chain hung over the door.
When I was 13, I decided I wanted to be good. That year I shot tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of shots. I shot every day, at the hoop hung on the garage. The hoop itself was hardly regulation — attached to a random piece of plywood and bolted through the roof, it was a little less than 9 feet high. But it was a hoop, so I shot at it. Every day. A thousand shots a day.
By the time I was 14, I was, in fact, pretty good.
Oh, not really good. I wasn’t ever going to be tall (topped out at 6 feet), and I was always going to be fairly unathletic. I’m not long; my arms and legs are stubby and my hands are small. But I could shoot, and I was willing enough on defense and as a rebounder and screener. I spent a few years as one of the best players in the city league for my age. That was it.