It was the Best Of Times....

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

When I read that I thought he was writing about the eighth grade because he could not have been any more on target. It was a period of opposites. Every time I thought things were going well something would happen to knock the wheels of the wagon like when I made the basketball team.

I loved basketball. I was tall for my age and could handle a basketball pretty well. I was enthusiastic about playing and was as interested in defense as offense. I was all over opponents. I guarded them against shots, dribbling and passing. I tried to steal the ball and was successful quite often. I was a decent shot maker and team mate.

I had played a lot of street ball with neighbors. I played at the YMCA, church and wherever there was a ball and a hoop. I went to see the Harlem Globetrotters with a friend and we spent endless hours afterward setting up plays and passing schemes to foil the most determined adversaries. I made dozens of last minute shots at the buzzer to save the day and win the game. Life was good. Basketball was king.

When I got permission from my parents to try out for the school team I was overwhelmed with optimism. I knew I could make the team if I had the chance.

When tryouts began I threw myself into the activities completely. I knew there were some very good players who were shoo-ins for the team. The trick would be to do well enough to catch the eye of the coach when I was performing well. So every time I entered the court I put on my best game face and focused on the task at hand. I thought things were going pretty well. But in the eighth grade there are hormones, age tics, attitudes, foolishness and all manner of diversions to tip the scale of justice.

One night after practice one of the coaches told me how well I was doing and offered a couple of suggestions to improve my performance. I was on cloud nine. I could see me taking the final shot for the state championship after that conversation. I headed to the shower with feet barely touching the ground.

After the shower I dressed and collected my belongings to go home. A few of us were horsing around blowing off steam as we headed to the doors. One of the members of the crowd saw a loose edge of a bank of lockers along the wall. He went over to the lockers and pulled at it. It gave a little and that delighted him and the rest of us.

Then he shouted, “Let’s pull it out of the wall.”

That was enough. We descended on the lockers, grabbed the handles and pulled in unison. They pulled out of the wall. At the instant it happened we all seemed surprised, that’s the eighth grade showing. We immediately tried to push it back in the wall. Some started running. Then, of course we all started running. Full of fright and fear and adrenaline we rushed toward the double plate glass doors in a fomenting mass of youthful energy. Our lead runner, the star of the team missed the crash bar to open the door and hit the plate glass instead. The glass broke and then the door opened and the demolition derby discovered the injured team mate.

He was cut up pretty bad. The glass had shattered. His face, hands and arms were bloody. We all knew we were in deep doo-doo. Our team mate went to the nearby hospital and the rest of us went home.

The cuts were not too severe and so our injured warrior recovered and went on to play on the team.  The entire group was interviewed by coaches and principals and it was finally decided that some players would have to pay the price for the fiasco. This would be one of those early lessons in convenient justice.

The boy who started the whole thing was the point guard. He got a slap on the wrist and went on to play on the team. Not so surprisingly the de facto team members all remained on the team. A few would be picked to act as sacrificial lambs and be removed from the team. I was one of them. Funny, that still bothers me. But as a friend told me once when I was complaining about the injustice of something, he said, “You’d be better off praying for mercy than justice.”

He was right of course. It’s an imperfect world. If it were perfect some of us wouldn’t be here.

Herb Ratliff, September 4, 2012, All Rights Reserved