Yo, I know that I’ve been inactive for a bit, but it’s cause ya girl is busy making moves. In about sixteen different directions.
- I keep adding to my photography portfolio — you can now add “youth hockey” and “boys and girls high school basketball” to the mix. I miss all the dunks/only get blurry photos of sick Sam Thompson dunks, only get photos of in-bounds passes, creep out the kids on the bench, and piss off all the Whitney Young security guards what uppppppp. Holler if you need me to shoot your sporting event.
- After spending basically my life watching college basketball and NBA ball, and after spending some time shooting high school games and watching the refs: Hey, I could be a pretty good ref. I look good in black and white. I can run the floor with the players (as long as I have my inhaler in my pocket). I know all the hand signals. And I’m emphatic as hell. Out of bounds and charging calls would be straight up theatrical. Plus, I’d be the most jacked ref since Ed Hochuli!
- I could make a nice living on “Cash Cab”. You know, if all the questions were about sports, the mafia/Al Capone, “The Sound of Music”, pink eye, and guns (Yeah, I’m as confused as you are on that one).
- I am shaping up to be one hell of nice Lupe groupie. And if I can’t be a Lupe groupie then I’ll settle for being J. Cole’s groupie. He’s not “The One”, but he’s (sometimes, eh) the one that I desire. Hey, I deleted Bright Eyes — Conor. Oberst. — off my iPod for him — it’s serious now.
- After watching an unhealthy amount of “Ghost Adventures”, I think I might make a nice ghost expert. I mean, these people watch grainy footage on a 20 inch TV screen and see a little flicker of light or a little “mist” in the background talmbout “Ooooh I see the foot and leg!” or “Oh yeah, that’s definitely someone’s arm!” Stuff is straight DELUSIONAL. So yeah, I could be good at that.
- In all seriousness though, I’m really tryna groom myself to follow in Gus Johnson’s footsteps. Yo, I’ve got hell of flair for hyperbole. I get real excited (read: j my p’s) over little to nothing. It’s some mad OPINIONS over here. I SHOUT when I get excited. And I’ve got a list of gems for my future soundboard. So. Roll this one around the mind grapes, CBS. If Gus keeps shouting like that, and if Greg Anthony keeps wearing horrendous corduroy pants to do broadcasts, you might need a backup. What up. Actually, I’m extending this offer to others, too, not just CBS. I’m looking at you, ESPN.
- Speaking of which, this isn’t related to my new life callings, but if I have to watch another basketball game on CBS (March Madness, *sigh*. Don’t ruin Christmas for me, please), I’m gonna get real unruly. Act like you’ve broadcast a basketball game before, hea-vens.
BUT IN ANY CASE.
This post began as, “I miss all the little things.” But as I kept writing, the “little things” kept getting bigger and bigger. All kicked off with a return trip to Midway Airport, and I was sitting at the same gate I sat in for my first trip to San Diego in ’09. I reminisced on how Alexis, Margaret, and I had gone to Garrett’s to mess around and waste our money, and we had told T-Bag to watch our stuff at the gate. We head back to the gate after sufficient foolery only to find T-Bag asleep, limbs all splayed out over our stuff — you know, watching it. It made me laugh out loud sitting at the gate. My “ain’t nothin’ to it but to do it” playlist gets me in some type of mood, man.
I miss the days when I ALWAYS had a disc o/in hand. Whether it was spinning on any of the fingers on my left hand, being flipped around in my right hand, somewhere in my bag, or tucked underneath my arm, I always had a disc, ready to go. You know, just in case I ran into someone on the Quad, or I got bored in class, or I needed something to do with my hands while walking so I wouldn’t feel so awkward. I was leaving for the airport yesterday morning when I realized I didn’t pack a disc in my bag and I felt a little deflated. Packing one would have been second nature to me about a year ago. Weird.
I miss the little bits of Saturday and Sunday morning that I had to myself in hotel dining rooms, when we stayed at hotels. I’d wake up early, get dressed, and slip out of the room early to tape my feet in the hotel dining room (much to the indignation of my fellow early morning diners), or in the hallway if there wasn’t a dining room. It was a nice, peaceful time I had to myself. If it was Saturday morning, the pre-tournament nerves were quelled for those ten, fifteen minutes I had to myself. If it was Sunday morning, I didn’t feel anything from Saturday, no aches, no sores, no pains — just peace. I’d have my music turnt up, just me, my headphones, and my tape. You know that sound athletic tape makes, when you start … unspooling? — would that be the phrase to describe it? — Anyway, you know what I mean. Sometimes I’d turn my music down just to hear that sound of the tape separating from the roll. Like the smell of tiger balm in the morning, that sound’s comforting to me. Maybe it’s just me and maybe that’s weird, but yo it gets me in some type of way I can’t describe. I’m not particularly a morning person, but once I brush my teeth I sort of get rolling, and even now when I’m sitting on my basement stairs at 7am, headphones in, about to head out to the gym, getting my braces on, I can’t revisit that peace, that serenity I felt on tournament mornings. It feels forced if that morning ritual isn’t preceding ultimate.
I miss playing 500 at practice and PRAYING that I’d get put in the taller group so I wouldn’t have to be in a group with Rachel Graham. Because Rachel Graham’s cold-blooded, y’all. Forearm shiver and she don’t care! Going up with two hands on your shoulders with no RESPECK for the principle of verticality! And she’d smile at you on her way down, too! But in all seriousness, 500 battles with RACH were completely unproductive. If anything, it turned out to be an ab workout for me, I’d be laughing so hard at some of the stuff RACH would do to get the disc. That was just fun, man, and I miss playing with someone who just had such a pure sense of joy for the game. (I also miss the time I was dying of some mysterious heart ailment at practice just before Nationals, and I was guarding Rachel in some endzone drill, and in the middle of cutting, RACH slows down to tell me, “You don’t look so good, JWo”, and then she burned me in the endzone or something like that. THE BEST PART of that whole sequence was that her comment to me wasn’t even some kind of slam on me, she said that to me out of GENUINE CONCERN. And then she took me for a ride anyway. SO GOOD.)
I guess I was always a pretty well-disciplined kid, so all the rules and order and “pageantry”, if you will, of high school basketball didn’t phase me. (Speaking of which, shout out to Lady Dolphin basketball. Worked out in my “Impossible is Nothing” State ’06 cutoff today.) I liked “having” to do warm-ups a certain way, “having” to dress a certain way, “having” to line up a certain way, etc. etc. — it never felt like I “had to” do anything. It didn’t feel forced or tedious or stupid to me. So I missed some of that when I started playing ultimate. Not that there wasn’t some uniformity to warm-ups, but there lacked a certain, I don’t know, formality or intimacy to it all. And then sometime during the second part of my junior season (?), we started giving each other high fives in line during the box and go-to drills. I don’t remember who started it or when it started, but it was a callback to my basketball days, when we’d do that during the layup line. It gave me chills, especially when we did it before big tournaments. One I remember specifically was Sectionals. I think we were warming up, getting ready to play North Park after we just had a pretty long bye. We’ve always had issues shaking off lethargy after mid-day byes, so I was definitely feeling a little tight, and the tepid start to our drill was not helping the situation. Then we started giving each other little high fives, little words of encouragement and whatnot. “Yeah, baby!” “Here we go!” Just little things like that. It felt like a train picking up steam, at first it was one or two people initiating the high fives. Then everyone was getting in on it. Picking up momentum. Little exchanges between teammates turned into raucous cheering and genuine electricity and excitement straight up emanating from our drill. It got me SO jazzed and SO amped for the game to start, had me all ready to go. And I loved that Peach got so amped about it and so into it. That made it fun, to see your teammate who’s normally pretty stoic get geeked up about something. Pumped a little extra air into your sneakers, too.
I miss the things you didn’t have to say to your teammates, and that goes for both on and off the field. I miss those little looks or head nods or whatever, and Sen10r Drinkz would know exactly where you wanted it or you’d know exactly where to put it for them. It felt natural and easy and really just fun. Really felt like we weren’t even working at it. And I miss the acute awareness my teammates seemed to have for me and Margaret when we were without the other our junior year. Like whenever I was out of town or something (I think it was when I visited Krystal in L.A. the weekend after Centex), Margaret was telling me about something she did at our apartment with T-Bag and Jen or whoever, and I was like hey! They never wanna do that when I’m in town! And then when Margaret had to go out of town towards the end of the year and I was at our apartment alone, they’d come over and have dinner with me or watch horrible Jurassic Park 16 movies with me or whatever, and Margaret would say they didn’t wanna do that when she was in town. I kinda got the feeling that they just didn’t want us to be alone ;). Maybe that’s not what motivated them at all, but I like to think that’s what it was.
And yo speaking of which, I miss when we played zone D. I miss all the chaos of everyone on the team yelling and talking to each other, letting the people in the cup know someone was crashing, or telling the wing to get back to the sideline, or letting the middle know she had to pick someone up, or letting the monster know someone was tryna sneak deep. I miss how LOUD it got, how sometimes when you were on the sideline it’d get so loud that you’d feel it in your chest, you know what I’m talking about? That buzzing, that thumping feeling in your chest, like you’re filling up with excitement? And I liked when it felt right, you know? Like if a stranger walked up to your game they’d think it was crazy chaotic, but you just completely understood it. Everyone knew who they were talking or listening to. Wall of sound. I don’t necessarily miss the sound or the communication or how everyone had something to do and nobody was milling around next to their bag or water bottle — I miss the fact that everyone was zoned in (for lack of a better phrase) on this one thing, on running the zone defense to perfection. Like eighteen different parts all pulling together for the same thing. Felt like an orchestra. There you go. Apart, just a bunch of different instruments making noise. Altogether, something beautiful.
I miss our Super Bowl parties. Which really involved the watching of little to no football. It was either about chasing anti-social bunnehs around Chan’s apartment, or taking photos of ourselves with aforementioned Hulksmashes, or eating way too much food. Or our “Super Bowl party” senior year, which consisted of everyone basically just eating at my apartment, and I’m pretty sure it was just a ruse Margaret and I used to get people to bring us food. I’m also pretty sure the only person who was still sort of watching the game was Nora? Maybe? Because she wanted the Saints to win. (*sigh* My man Peyton. *deep sigh*)
This is random, and possibly more information about me than you ever needed to know, but I miss needing to pee just as I put my foot on the line, watching the pull go up, or just as I’m about to sprint down on D. Every time, without fail. No matter that I just used the bathroom, I’d always get that sensation right before the first pull. I miss those nerves, I miss the way my stomach would turn. My mom thinks it’s funny that I play defense, because she says that a. I’m not coordinated/patient enough to play offense, and b. I’ve always got this terrible scowl or snarl on my face. Which I don’t mean to do, honest, that’s just my face at rest. You know, when I’m not making an effort to look disinterested or happy. I just look angry. Which is unfortunate, but whatever. But yo, I miss that. Picking your person across the line you were gonna D up, getting in “that” mindset. No matter if you shut them down or if they tooled you on that possession (or for the rest of the game, for that matter), those seconds or those minutes leading up to the matchup always feel the biggest, always feel the most exciting. That illegal handcheck (what up) as you feel them out, keeping a hand on ’em as you scope out where the disc is and then scan back quickly to check their eyes to see where they’re looking. Maybe there’s a little bumping, possibly even some words exchanged. And the moment you feel them take off or you’ve read that they’ve committed to something, those seconds between preparation and finally reaction — DANG. It’s like a roller coaster ride inching up that hill, and all the foreplay, all the dancing around, finally crescendo into that RUSH when your person takes off and you take off with ’em. And sometimes all of that emotion, all of that rush I’m talking about — happens in mere seconds.
There’s about a hundred million other things I miss like hell. Little and big things. I was thinking about it the other day, rewatching some old NCAA tournament games I have on VHS. (Breaking down tape like ya boy Chet, whatevs.) Miss practicing low post moves in the backyard against my dad even though I had NO BUSINESS in the low post. Miss draining free throws in the yard after washing the dishes, practicing bounce passes to myself by tossing the ball off the side of my house while I was at the “top of the key” and jumpstopping at the low block, catching the “bounce pass”, and going up strong with it for a layup. Man, I just miss competing, you know?
This feeling will revisit me again, I’m sure. Unforch I’ll probably write another sappy post like this so … sorry. Just a young’n dreamin’.
