Entries Tagged 'being a kid' ↓

At what point did video games suddenly become cool? When I was a kid you played video games until (and ONLY until) you or one of your friends got a drivers license, at which point you said, “Screw Mario Brothers, I’ve got better things to do.” Personally I always looked forward to the day when I would be deemed officially too old for video games. I never knew which turtle shell to stomp on to get to the secret level, or which bricks you could smash to get ten bazillion lives. I don’t even know how anyone managed to figure that stuff out in those days before the internet. Actually yes I do know how they figured it out. They were geeks! And they had no life! So I was very much looking forward to sixteen, and turning in my paddles for the chance at maybe touching a girl’s boob. Of course that particular dream wouldn’t become a reality until the age of 25 or so, but at least nobody was calling me a “Gamorian” every time I got killed.

But then the language changed. Suddenly anyone who spent twenty bleary-eyed hours a day pushing buttons in their parents’ basement weren’t complete video game nerds. They were… “gamers.” I’m sorry, gamers? Slap an enigmatic title on it and suddenly it’s cool to be lame? Why couldn’t they have done that for the geeky things I was into? Rather than assembling plastic X-wing models in the secrecy of my own room, I could have been… a cementer. Nah, too easy to draw out the “C” and make it sound gay. A gluer? A builder? Exactoist! Crap, some geekery just doesn’t lend itself to badass verbage.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like playing the occasional bout of Mario Kart on my sister-in-law’s Wii as much as the next guy (and I’m sorry, but the fact that the end of this sentence doesn’t make anyone’s eyebrows go up is just plain wrong). But you used to be able to get that kind of fix with five dollars worth of quarters at the local video arcade. And since it was kind of a social situation, indulging that latent geekery provided at least some small probability that you might meet a girl who might let you touch her boob. But unless something goes horribly wrong, there’s no way that is going to happen on my sister-in-law’s Wii (seriously how does that not bug the crap out of everybody???).

Am I wrong? I can’t imagine I’m the only thirty-year-old in America who thinks the ubiquitousness of video games is a bad thing… the only thirty-year-old who looked forward to buying a car for no other reason than he could finally stop memorizing some stupid UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT combination.

I was watching the Dane Cook “Rough Around the Edges” special on Comedy Central the other night (I assure you, there was absolutely nothing else on) and the first thing I want to say is: Dane, buddy, I know you’ve been at this standup thing for a few years, so you should know better by now—when your comedy special airs on basic cable, it might be a good idea to make sure they don’t have to bleep every other word out of your mouth. Kinda makes it hard to appreciate the gentle comedy.

But here’s the good thing about the show: Dane’s opening bit was about a place in New Hampshire called “Benson’s Animal Farm.” Now, for any of you who didn’t grow up in New England, I’m sure that reference is lost completely on you. In fact it might even be lost on some of you who did grow up in the area. Benson’s was my very first amusement park experience. Well, I think “amusement park” is a tad too grandiose a description for the place, which was really little more than a glorified fairgrounds with cheesy midway rides and a sad little zoo thrown in for good measure. But what did I know about quality entertainment when I was all of three years old?

I don’t remember much about that day at Benson’s Animal Farm save for two things. First, I remember thinking (seriously, no joke) that it must have been Robert Guillaume’s day off. But the more important memory—Benson’s was also my very first experience on a roller coaster.

Though again, “roller coaster” is perhaps a wee bit too generous. I mean sure, it was an open-air train on a track that went up an incline and coasted down at an increased rate of speed, except the total distance traveled was little more than three hundred feet at best. The fact that they let me ride it at three-years-old gives you some idea of the G-forces it was pulling. It was intended to be just a bit of low level amusement for kids and their parents, much like the rest of the park. But that didn’t stop me from screaming my head off the entire time.

It wasn’t the speed that got me. I knew perfectly well what I was getting myself into in that arena. And I remember being really excited when I got onto the roller coaster with my mom. We sat right up front so I could see and experience everything. The ride started and we climbed the ramp, crested over the top and started down. And so I started screaming. A happy little scream at first, simply because I knew that’s what you were supposed to do on a roller coaster. But that all changed as we approached the bottom at maximum speed. You see, the builders must have realized just how lame their ride was, and so as an added gag they stuck a mini section of track onto the bottom of the hill which shot out a few feet and abruptly ended. Ha ha funny, it looks like we’re going to fly off the track!

Yeah, I didn’t get the joke. As our car rushed toward the “end” of the line, and the potential end of my life, my innocent little scream turned into pure, unadulterated terror. Holy god, we’re going to die! The train, of course, veered to the side at the last second and we hurtled in a small circle over a couple bumps and around a few curves before coming to rest at the bottom of the incline. I managed to calm down almost immediately, even as the train started back up the hill (the circuit was so stinking short they had to send us around several times just to make it worth the effort of a line). The train crested the hill again and started down. Once again I saw that small chunk of track terminating into thin air and I howled, tears streaming from my eyes, certain I was about to plummet to my death. But at the last second the train swerved and we were safe. By the third, fourth and fifth time around, you’d think I would have picked up on the pattern, if not the humor in it. But at the age of three, I was not what one might call a “logical positivist.” Just because the sun had risen every day since the beginning of time did not mean that I would not die a horrible painful death as hard jagged metal sheered through the soft tissue of my body. So I screamed and cried and screamed some more until the thoroughly evil man finally stopped the ride and let us off. I’m pretty sure I got ice cream out of the ordeal so it wasn’t all bad.

Benson’s closed it’s gates in the mid-80’s and has become something of a mini-ghost town. After watching Dane Cook’s oft-bleeped routine, I’m suddenly rather curious to take a stop back at the old ‘Farm and see if the memories of my first palpable fear of death come shrieking back to me. Jeez, do any of you really wonder that I’m such a neurotic mess?

A couple years ago, armed with three juice boxes and a Ziploc bag full of Cheerios, Lauren and I took our niece to see Piglet’s Big Movie.  It was cute and fun and all.  The only thing that bothered me was that about five minutes from the end, there’s a point where you think Pooh and Piglet are dead!  Seriously, the entire cast cries for like thirty seconds because they assume Pooh and Piglet have just plummeted over a waterfall to their deaths.

I couldn’t believe they would put something that intense and traumatic into a kids movie.  But then I had a conversation with my sister about the movies we loved growing up, and it occurred to me that if kids were traumatized by Pooh and Piglet’s temporary demise, they would get royally screwed up by the things we used to watch.

Take for example Charlottes Web.  What a depressing ninety minutes that was.  A pig who fights to not be slaughtered only to have his best friend die in the end.  Now I know the movie was based on a book so I can’t really blame the filmmakers.  But then again, in E.B. White’s version you didn’t actually see Charlotte die.  It was just kind of understood.  But in the cartoon she sings the saddest most nostalgic song ever, and then on the last note, exhales her terminal breath and wilts.  Cut to a close up of Wilbur crying.  “Charlotte?  Charlotte?  CHARLOTTE!”  Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, all of Charlotte’s children run away!

Dot and the Kangaroo was about a little girl lost in the Australian Outback who is befriended by, you guessed it, a talking Kangaroo.  Kangaroo protects Dot from dingoes, the weather and even a freaky monster called the Bunyip.  When Dot finally finds her way home, she’s eager to introduce Kangaroo to her family.  But by the time she runs back to the forest, Kangaroo has run away.  The entire ending credit sequence shows Kangaroo hopping through the forest while over the soundtrack you hear little Dot crying, “Kangawoo… Kangawoo…  Oh Kangawoo…”  Luckily for my sister and me, our parents didn’t keep a gun or straight razors in the house.

E.T. abandons Elliot.  Willy Wonka yells at Charlie.  Amalthea becomes the only unicorn to know regret.  Atreyu’s horse dies and Fantasia is destroyed.  The rats of N.I.M.H. were just plain dark and depressing.  And Luke realizes that the love of his life is actually his sister.  Seriously, was it some kind of massive, collective cocaine withdrawal that inspired Hollywood to depress the crap out of us kids in the seventies and early eighties?

Or were they trying to do us a favor?  Maybe we needed that sense of reality.  Maybe Hollywood knew there were lessons we needed to learn.  People die, endings aren’t always happy, and friends will screw you over the second something better comes along.  It’s probably easier to learn about death by watching a cartoon spider wilt in a barn than by watching Grandma wilt in her bed.  Are we doing our kids a disservice by making every movie unrealistically happy with singing bears, dancing vegetables and big red dogs?  Maybe Pooh and Piglet should have gone over that waterfall.  Maybe Nemo should have stayed lost.  Maybe rather than singing cheerfully alongside Pocahontas’s people, the white men should have stayed true to history and slaughtered them.

Hey, maybe this is the answer to ending school shootings.  Not less violence in movies—more violence.  More depressing, horrifying, make-you-afraid-to-cry-in-front-of-your-friends violence.  Let’s have less vegetables dancing and more spiders wilting.  That’s what me and my friends grew up on, and you know what—none of us ever shot one of our buddies.  We knew what death was.  It wasn’t a glorified spectacle to us.  It was a loyal spider wilting!

Will I let my daughter watch the movies I grew up with?  I may have never killed anybody, but I sure had a lot of nightmares that I apparently never got over.  I don’t know if she should have to deal something as heavy as watching Charlotte wilt or listening to Dot cry for three straight minutes.  Maybe I’ll just edit the last four and a half minutes out of Piglet’s Big Movie then take her out for ice cream to mourn.

The first time I saw Grease, the summer after third grade, I wanted to walk like Danny Zuko. He just had this… swagger, with all this up-and-down arm motion, as though the bones from his heel to his shoulder were fused together. So, I practiced. Yes, I actually practiced walking. Swing the leg up, lift the shoulder, and bring them back down… It was an exhausting routine. John Travolta must have trained for months for that role! I tried to get my friends to join me, but they hadn’t seen the movie and didn’t realize just how cool I was trying to make them. Wiped out, I too gave up after a week.

By fifth grade—right around the time we all started thinking girls were pretty rad—I had become obsessed with how I looked while walking. I’d be playing outfield in kickball (nobody would let me near a base), then have to come in when it was our turn to kick. I’d start running then quickly realize that it made me look too excited. So I’d downshift, walking casually as if to say, “Hey I’m walking, but I don’t care.” Suddenly I’d be critiquing how my feet and legs were moving in conjunction with the rest of my body. Bend your knees more. Should my arms be swinging? No, keep them still. But then I’ll look too stiff. This can’t look right can it? I decided that maybe running was, in fact, the lesser of two evils.

It got worse as I got older. By seventh grade, for whatever reason, my heels stopped touching the ground when I walked. The middle of my foot would hit, then I’d roll up onto the ball and keep on going. No big deal really, except that it caused my head to bob up and down enough that others began to imitate. I couldn’t even blame it on some really cool sports injury or terminal illness. The closest I’d ever come to a bona fide limp was the time I stubbed my toe on a teammate’s foot during a pee-wee basketball game.

I was already short and skinny with bad skin. I couldn’t let this be yet another trigger for adolescent ridicule. By eighth grade, I was once again practicing how I walked. It was a conscious effort, keeping my eyes on my feet and watching their progress as I talked myself through. Heel to toe. Bend the knee and swing it forward. And again, heel to toe… Some people think that walking with the head down indicates a lack of self-confidence. Well, sometimes it just indicates an inspection of motor skills.

With determination, I eventually broke myself of that toe-walking stigma, gliding gracefully through the halls, my head showcasing only the smallest, most natural hint of bounce. Of course, there were times when I was concentrating so much on my heel-to-toeing that I didn’t actually watch where I was walking and ended up bumping into open lockers.

These days, I can walk with my eyes forward and my head held high. The heel-to-toe concept is second nature. Of course, lingering pubescent trauma doesn’t go away that easily. Every time—and I do mean every time—I’m walking near a pretty girl, I become maniacally aware of the movement of my feet, legs, ankles and knees. If it’s just her, me and a whole lot of ground to cover—like that long walk to and from the reception desk—my eyes instantly drop to my feet, positive I’m tip-toeing, my head bobbing like a buoy with each step. So, I readjust. Now I’m certain I’ve overcorrected and am probably walking like Donnie Hubbard, that goofy, special-ed kid from high school whose head never broke the X-plane even while he was running. I double- and triple-check, perfecting each step until I veer into and trip over the magazine rack. My only recourse at that point is to tuck my chin into my chest, walk faster, and get away before she calls the cops.

So ladies, if we ever cross paths on the street or in the lobby, please don’t mind me. I’m not avoiding eye contact. I just think I walk like a dork.

In second grade, we were asked to draw a picture and write a paragraph describing what we wanted to be when we grew up. There were your standards: teachers, doctors, firemen. A couple ambitious kids drew a robotics engineer and President of the United States. I freaked my teacher mildly out when I said I wanted to be a “Spy.” I drew myself in army fatigues and war paint with guns and ammo strapped to every inch of my body. I had a bow and arrow slung over my shoulder and throwing stars tucked into the cuffs of my pants (because I was also, apparently, part Ninja).

According to my paragraph, I wanted to be a spy because “you get to sneak into enemy forts and shoot people with guns and blow up buildings with bombs and exploding arrows.” It’s probably not surprising that I had recently seen Rambo for the first time. A kid pulling a stunt like this today would probably get a three-day suspension. I didn’t even get a talking-to, just my mom asking me why I didn’t want to be an astronaut anymore.

I used to make my Star Wars figures spar on the sides of cliffs (a.k.a.: arm of the couch) in an effort to throw each other into the lava (a.k.a.: carpet) below. My Masters of the Universe and Transformers play-sessions always involved mass brawls to the death with plenty of clashing swords and laser fire. My sister and I invented a game appropriately named Spies, which was basically hide-and-seek with guns. While we had toy guns in the house, my weapon of choice was always the vacuum cleaner hose extension. Tucked into my armpit, make a loud TTFF-TTFF-TTFF-TTFF noise and I had myself a powerful little machine gun.

I’ve never seriously thought about killing anybody for real, never owned a real gun, never even gotten into a fist-fight. Pretend violence always stayed pretend for me, though my parents were wise to not buy me the BB gun I wanted for Christmas. Better that I stuck to squirt guns and sawed off broomsticks because I managed to get out of childhood without harming myself or others. Though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still occasionally draw down with my .357 remote control making rapid PAUGH-PAUGH-PAUGH sounds as I execute imaginary opponents… or perhaps rouge communist agents.

I have never understood why people say that children are fearless. I was scared of everything as a kid. Mostly zombies. Though I was also afraid of the dark, the woods, getting lost and loud noises amongst other things… though these were really just extensions, symptoms really, of my fear of zombies. Face it, when you’re that small, the world is full of things that can seriously kill you and eat your guts… stupid Thriller music video. Most kid fears you eventually realize were silly in the first place. Others you ultimately have to tackle head-on.

The first fear I can ever remember facing was an old hunters lookout in the woods behind my house. Erected by the previous owners, the lookout was a simple four-legged structure with a fifteen-foot ladder leading up to a partially enclosed platform. Built many years earlier, the wood had started to rot and blacken, and it was hiding in just enough shadow to resemble an evil haunted tower. Every time I saw it, I shivered, feeling like there must be zombies looking out at me from the gloom, just waiting for me to come closer.

Sometimes, I ran away. Other times, I went to that end of the yard just to look at it and prove how brave I was. Occasionally I even yelled, “I’m not afraid of you!” though I made sure never to cross the tree-line. Not until I was five years old did I decide that enough was enough. I was not afraid. Zombies were not real. And I was going to prove it by climbing the tower.

Oh, how it scowled at me that day. I only hesitated for a second before plunging into that part of the woods for the first time. I covered the fifty feet to the tower in seconds, not giving myself the chance to reconsider. I refused to even look up at it lest I lose my nerve—or lest a zombie actually be glaring down at me. I took a deep breath and started up, but only got one foot onto the ladder before the old dead wood snapped under the weight of my little body. The sound was like a gunshot in my ear. First I screamed. Then, I ran. Then I ran faster. It was the first time I had ever faced a fear. And the fear had won. At least nothing chased me out of the woods. I still had all of my soul and most of my entrails. It really could have gone at lot worse.

Ever had somebody walk in on you while you were sitting on the toilet? Isn’t that embarrassing? Doesn’t your face just turn bright red? I’ll bet you get really mad at the person don’t you? Well guess what. I got no sympathy for you, bub. You have obviously never taken the time to learn proper toilet privacy defenses. It’s your own fault that somebody saw you doing number two.

I grew up in a house where the only doors that locked were the main entrances. The bedrooms didn’t lock. Neither did the bathroom. In fact, the bathroom door didn’t even shut tight. All it took was a cat’s paw to push the thing open. I had a father and a younger sister who were not prone to knocking before entering a room. But in spite of all these perils working against me, not one person in almost thirty years of potty training has caught me making pee pees or poo poos.

The key to bathroom privacy is to develop bat-like radar senses. A keen ear allows one to assess threats and formulate a defense. I’ve never taken an official poll, but I daresay that in ninety-five percent of all toilet-walk-in-ons, the victim never even knew the violator was there. I always listened for footsteps as they came down the hallway, trying to judge by their speed and intensity if this was a parent rushing to relieve a full bladder or merely a sibling pretending to be a pony.

As soon as human sounds came within a certain perimeter (I used ten feet as my safe distance), the next phase, subterfuge, began. I had to let anybody within earshot know that I was in there without actually shouting, “I’m taking a crap!” I was trying to avoid embarrassment after all. Sniffling, clearing my throat, rattling the pages on my magazine were all valid diversionary tactics.

Still many came close to crossing the fence-line. But I never allowed them one foot across the threshold before turning them back. Those who ignored my more subtle warnings were routed by a direct and forceful “Hey!” as they opened the door.

These days I’m like a man who grew up in a bathroom on the Gaza Strip—always aware of my environment, anticipating attacks and cutting them off before they occur. No latch on a men’s room stall? No problem. As soon as somebody enters the room, I augment my magazine rattling by sticking out my right leg as a doorstop. An army with a battering ram couldn’t invade my private time.

My bathroom motto is, “If you’re not prepared, then you deserve to be invaded.” At the same time, I’m sensitive to the fact that we live in a relatively soft and danger-free society where people don’t generally have to worry about protecting themselves. That’s why when I walk into a men’s room, I always check for feet under the stall. Even if I don’t see any, I gingerly tap on the door as I slowly slowly slowly push it open. I’m like the British Army during the Revolution, wearing bright red and pounding on the drums as I march toward a secret fort.

And yet there have been times when the gate has opened, and I find myself looking some middle-aged guy right in the face. And he’s just looking back at me, surprised! I guess maybe he thought it was God on the other side of the door. Why else wouldn’t he have at least said, “Somebody in here”?

I of course instinctively say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and shut the door. But then I get mad at myself. After all, why should I be sorry? That’s like one of the bulls in Madrid apologizing to the dope in the red hat. Did he not think the bull would run directly at him?

It’s a dangerous world out there, people and the sanctuary of your bathroom won’t shield you from it. So take it from me, be prepared, protect yourself, and for God’s sake, wash your hands.

Do they still assign reading groups in school? Personally, I think they were an invaluable part of the learning process. It allowed us to quickly and easily identify all of the “slow people” so that we wouldn’t cheat off them during geography tests. Because inevitably, every group had a mascot, a giveaway. It was either the kid who could already count to a thousand by kindergarten, or the kid who was still drooling because he hadn’t figured out how to keep his bottom lip tucked. By association, you were able to pigeonhole every other kid in that group.

Reading groups were always given cutesy animal names based on the textbook you were reading. Since my first grade book was called “Travelling the Trade Winds,” my group was The Trade Wind Tigers. Everyone knew that we were the smart group as much as they knew that The Getting Ready Rabbits (their book was “Getting Ready to Read”) was the “‘tard group.” Hey, we were mean little six-year-olds and they didn’t start teaching sensitivity until third grade. Fifth grade for the Rabbits.

While we Tigers were reading thoroughly stimulating stories about Pedro who had lost his pet snake at the market, the Rabbits were still busy learning their letters and phonetics. At first, we were content to just mind our own business and call them i’jits behind their backs. But then our teacher, Mrs. Alcott did something to incite revolution. It seemed that the Rabbits were having a hard time understanding what sound the letter G made. Mrs. Alcott just couldn’t make them grasp that it was pronounced “guh” not “juh.” After about a week of no progress, she got inspired and gave all the Rabbits a piece of GUH-um. Strawberry-flavored, Bubblicious, GUH-um. She let them chew it in class and everything. Big mistake, Mrs. Alcott. Big mistake.

A powder keg had been ignited under the Tigers. We knew what sound frickin’ G made. She never gave us any gum. We nodded to each other with a silent accord and made it our immediate mission to destroy the Getting Ready Rabbits. Recess was an exercise in genocide that day as we chased the Rabbits, tackled them to the ground and stole their gum. We reveled in our own scholastic aptitude as we threw their GUH-um on the GUH-round and stomped it in the GUH-rass.

It was probably because of kids like the Tigers that the Human Potential Movement started “homogenizing” classrooms and grouping kids of all intelligence levels together. Their reasoning was that it would somehow make the kids with “learning disorders” not feel inferior to those of us who weren’t going to have jobs with paper hats. Oh, but we still knew who they were. Hiding them among the Tigers only provided temporary camouflage. We hadn’t forgotten the gum incident, and we were as persistent as Elmer Fudd hunting our Rabbits. We just had to be more methodical, dangling carrots in the form of questions, like “What is the plural of Moose?” to see if we could entrap them in answers like “Mooses.” (The correct answer is “Meese” of course.)

Unfortunately, by high school, the evolutionary playing field had been leveled and most of these Rabbits evolved into big, scary, Monty Python, psycho man-eating Rabbits. They could tear us a new sphincter had we tried taking their gum again. Stupid Darwin.

What if they split us into reading groups in our adult lives? That’d be great wouldn’t it? Maybe, instead of questions about race and religion, the census could ask us what the square root of negative one is. They could give us cute little names and everything. The Associated Press would release a report stating that, “According to the latest census, Los Angeles is comprised of 6% Mensa Monkeys, 22% Adequate Alligators, and 70% Bricks.”

(In case you’re wondering, the correct answer was “i“, a mathematical concept called an “Imaginary Number” which is only used by über-intelligent former Trade Wind Tigers who now belong to the remaining 2% group called The Too Smart For Their Own Good Gophers.)

Reading groups would make things so much simpler. If we knew that a particular street was populated by Bricks, we’d know to never stop and ask for directions. We’d go one street over to where all the Alligators lived. A poetic thought, though probably too idealistic. Eventually, people would just start abusing the system. They’d rightly assume that many Bricks forget to lock their doors, then break into their houses to steal their gum.

In the whole history of human discourse, I don’t think there has ever been a more decisive stalemate breaker than the word “Infinity.” I still remember the first time I was detoured by this powerful tactic. Lucas Murphy and I were no doubt arguing over some matter of great cosmic importance. I was probably trying to convince him that grass can turn your spit green. After about twenty rounds of “oh-no-it-CAN’T–oh-yes-it-CAN–oh-no-it-CAN’T–oh-yes-it-CAN,” my nemesis anted up and floored me. “Oh no it can’t, Infinity!”

“Oh yes it— what? That’s not even a word!” I shot back. “Oh-yes-it-IS–oh-no-it-ISN’T.” Then some meddling second-grader had to put in his two cents. “Infinity means forever.” I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. How could I argue with Lucas after that? When your reading and writing vocabulary consists of, “See Spot run,” Infinity is a hardcore word. Obviously, Lucas was the smarter man. I conceded defeat with dignity, shouting, “Yeah, well you’re a ca-ca face!” I ran away, with Lucas close behind, yelling, “I know you are but what am I!”

Infinity changed the dynamics of every schoolyard dispute. As five-year-olds, we were content to shout, “Yeah huh! No sah! Yeah huh! No sah!” until the bell rang. Because whoever gave up first was obviously the one who was wrong. Infinity forced us out of our comfortable little paradigm. Unable to sidestep this particular landmine, we were left tongue-tied time and again. The best any of us could counter with was another round of “No sah!” The more aggressive kids simply used the F-word, but everybody recognized this as a sign of weakness. A six-year-old’s only hope was to make sure he said, “Infinity,” first. It was no longer our ace in the hole. It was our primary attack.

It took several months before some kid figured out a way to break through the Infinity conundrum. I don’t remember who it was, but the kid was ahead of his time—probably learning long division already. He had somehow discovered that Infinity is actually a mathematical concept in which numbers increase indefinitely, such that no value, no matter how great, can be considered the highest. Basically, if you think twenty-gazillion is big, just add one to it. So when faced with the now notorious Infinity assault—probably at the hands of Lucas Murphy himself—this brilliant strategist countered with, “Infinity plus one!”

Whether he was aware of the fact that he was employing this concept in direct contrast to its very connotation, I just don’t know. But, whoa. It was like watching Superman exposed to kryptonite as the impenetrable Infinity argument was finally breached. Lucas, his trump card now trumped, stood there stammering, knowing we were all looking to him for a comeback. All he could muster was, “You can’t do that. Infinity means forever. You can’t add one to forever.” Even though we all knew he was probably right, it was still a hollow defense. And our new hero had banked on it. “You can SO!” he spat. “You can NOT!” said a desperate Lucas. “Yes you CAN. Infinity!” With nothing to fall back on, Lucas was forced to abandon the conviction he had just seconds ago professed. “You can not…! Two-infinity!”

As the two sparred back and forth, raising the stakes until they were into the infinity-infinity-infinity-infinity-infinity to the infinity power range, all who were looking on knew that no argument would ever be resolved the same way again. From here on out, we knew that we were going to have to actually validate our arguments with facts and data, and that no amount of yeah huh-ing or Infinity-ing were going to make a lick of difference in the ongoing drama of “I’m right and you’re wrong.”

I was not what one would call a “star” ball player in high school. On the other hand, I never made up lame excuses to get out of gym class either. I did have a jump-shot that I could sink from pretty much any spot on the floor provided nobody was guarding me. Let’s put it this way, I was enough of an athlete to feel justified in refusing “pity time.”

For those of you who a) never played sports or b) went All-State four years in a row, pity time is given during the final seconds of a game when your team is either way ahead or way behind. The coach figures no matter how incompetent you are, there is no way your presence on the court could possibly affect the outcome of the game, so he points a finger your way and yells, “Get in there!” You drag your feet onto the court, wondering which looks less pathetic; putting up six seconds of meaningless effort, or standing completely still as the ball drives past you. Personally I was always an advocate of setting a new record for fouling out.

Pity time is about the cruelest thing a coach can do to an already insecure kid. At least if a kid sits the bench the entire game, everyone will just kind of forget he’s there. But sending him in for no other reason than to say, “Hey, at least you got to play,” is like hanging a big neon YOU SUCK sign over his head.

Our JV coach began every season with the idealistic declaration, “Everybody on my team will play.” He apparently forgot that at a school of three hundred kids, only about thirty guys tried out for the team. The top fifteen went varsity, meaning it was pretty much, what-you-see-is-what-you-get for the JV squad. The coach quickly realized that putting some of these kids in for longer than six consecutive seconds would mean certain team suicide. So, to avoid being a hypocrite, he’d wait for an inconsequential moment, then say, “Go be aggressive!”

We had a teammate, Donnie Hubbard who, I kid you not, was still coming to grips with the concept of dribbling. It took over half the season to convince him that he could not run the ball like a quarterback. Donnie was just happy that people were finally allowing him to handle blunt objects in a group setting. So whenever the coach sent Donnie in for his pity time, you better believe he jumped right up and sprinted onto the court just in time to turn around and sprint right back. A banner effort, even if it was only three seconds. “Hey, at least he got to play.”

But, as I said, I felt competent enough to refuse the pity. So when I first heard, “Hodges, get in there!” during a 70–15 game, I had the backbone to say, “Screw you and your pity time too!”

To be completely honest, my backbone was of a far more soft and squishy material than all that. The conversation probably went more like:

“Hodges, get in there!”

“Um… now?”

“Yeah, and make sure you box out number twelve on the rebounds.”

“Um… I’d really rather not… if that’s okay with you.”

I seem to remember running a lot of extra laps that next practice. And still my coach tried to pity me. By about my tenth pitiful call to arms (we got slaughtered a lot that year), all that running had weakened my will to resist and I finally shuffled onto the court, tail between my legs, determined to make the best of it. Unfortunately, the blind-as-a-bat referee was looking the other way when I fouled number twelve right through the parquet floor.

That next season, in the interest of anger management, I decided it was probably best to hang up my high-tops, join the school newspaper and write scathing articles about my former coach.