Crashing the Boards

There were basketball courts in all of our church houses and that is where we would go to practice and play every week. One week one of our big 6'8” monsters was showing how he could dunk and it was pretty cool to see him bring the power. He decided on one of his dunks to give it little extra sauce and really rip down on the rim. He ripped it and the rim shattered out of the backboard in a magnificent shower of glass. The poor slam-dunker fell flat onto his but and the crystal rain fell all around him while he laid there trying to catching his breath. He stood up, rim still in hand, his face white with terror. I have seen guys dealing with pregnant girlfriend news with more equanimity. His family was not well off and the cost of a glass backboard was all that was on his mind. In a quavering voice he asked no one in particular how much a basketball backboard costs. Someone offered the number 200 and it looked like that poor guy was going to vomit. He sat back down, cross-legged, in the glass and contemplated his fate with a depth of sadness I had only seen when someone had lost a beloved pet. As spectators we went from amazed to confused in just a few seconds we wanted to talk about the awesome destruction but our friend was clearly not feeling the joy so we were not sure what to do. We settled on cleaning up the glass and telling him it would be fine and then talking about it while we walked home and all the next day at school. It turned out it was only about eighty dollars and someone better off paid for the replacement but there was a new strict no dunking rule in place which gave me a good excuse never to learn how.