Editing note: We
are now rejoining my sophomore year in high school already in
progress! I wanted to be an athlete, not just one who played games
but one who was legitimized by participation in a school sanctioned
team. The rational for this was two fold; fold the first, I would get
all kinds of attention from adoring fans. This is a common
misconception in sports fantasies, everyone imagines being a winner.
Fold the second, I would get the women, all of them is how it went in
my visualizations. All of them, every single time. This is also a
common misconception in fantasies. To achieve my goals I played and
practiced basketball all of the time. I was not tall but I was
banking on developing ball handling and jumping ability. I dribbled
around our backyard court for hours and I jumped up and hit the
ceiling fan in may parents room spinning it over and over. I was
under the delution that I could work hard and I would get to compeate
on equal footing with thte kids who had tried out and made the team
last year and that there was going to be some changing of the guard.
I believed this, in part, because Michael Jordan was such a big
success and he had been cut from his high school team was what we had
all heard. He worked hard and made the team and the rest was history
as he became the best basketball player of all time. I didn't know at
the time that the real story was that as a freshman young Mike was
not cut from the team he just did not play varsity in deference to
the senior players, he did however start on the junior varsity team
and then the next year as a sophomore was promoted to the varsity
squad. That is not being cut that is playing three years and not four
ahead. I just wanted to play at my grade level and I believed that,
with hard work, could happen. I showed up to tryouts which had much
fewer kids then there had been in 9th
grade tryouts which I mistook for me having better odds. I out worked
everyone came early and left late and it didn't help when the cut
list was put up on the door the third day I was once again not on it.
That meant no glory, no fame and worst of all no
all-the-women-I-want. I was bitter and made it known that I was a
better player than some of the kids on the team but I had been cut
for political and social reasons. The old refrain of the cast-off in
sports, ' He made the team because of his last name' or something to
that effect. I now do not know if that was the whole reason I was
cut, being 5' 10” and having little experience in interscholastic
play may have had more to do with it. Probably the former.
