Old Men and Basketball

      There comes a time in every ball players life when we should gracefully leave the court and take up a game that does not involve grinding our knees into pulp. We don’t of course, but we should. Instead we find new ways to become effective on the court, by which I mean we cheat.

      It starts off innocent enough, a little shuffle and lean while setting a pick, a few extra steps on the way to the hoop. But then it gets ugly. Let’s just call it, for sake of argument, DG ugly.

         DG ugly means camping out in the paint for hours beyond the three-second rule without even pretending to move your feet. DG ugly means calling a foul on every single shot you take regardless if anyone is near you. DG ugly means criticizing every move your teammates make while standing still on a fast break. Let’s just avoid the entire subject of elbowing your opponents in the post.

       When I was in my thirties I swore that I would never become one of those guys. But last night with the game well in hand, one point away from the walk off shot I crossed over to the dark side. It could have been a foul, the kid didn’t argue the call, but I knew it was cheap. I was chasing down a loose ball, and got one hand on it, when out of nowhere this twenty something flew by me and stole the ball. True, he took half my arm with him and he reached in, but I never would have called it ten years ago. I just would have shrugged and said to myself “self, protect the ball next time”.  I called the foul and then hit the walk off shot next time down the court…………it was not a proud moment.         So what’s the moral of this tale? Cheaters prosper? Of course they do. In fact, it’s part of the game. No one even raised an eyebrow! ARRGGGGG!!!!!

         It is not too much of a leap to say that basketball mirrors life.         I’m reminded of a moment I shared with the lunch lady in my old school. Cathy is a big-hearted Eastern European woman with a very thick accent. One day I came into the kitchen and said, “Hey Cathy, I’m stealing an apple”.

         “Corey, you know vat happens vhen you steal?”

        

         “Yeah, I get stuff for free”

         Sigh…..why is being bad so rewarding?

The Scarlet "J"

         In February of 2008, the New England Patriots lost to the New York Giants in the final moments of Super Bowl XLII. The loss solidified my place in the family as “THE JINX”. [1] Whenever I make a sports prediction the universe has an equal and opposite reaction. I swore, after being teased relentlessly, that I would keep my mouth shut. But my family still insists celebrating my faults. I kept my mouth shut since that humiliating day[2]. That is, until last Monday when the Celtics played the New York Knickerbockers in game one of their 2011 playoff series.  While the aging Celtics were generally outplayed by a rapidly improving Knickerbockers, Ray Allen drained a three point shot in the final seconds of the game to put Boston ahead.  I posted one innocent word on my Facebook status; “RAAAYYYY!!!!!”.

         My father and brothers responded by writing me long letters about how happy they were that I was rooting for the Celtics. Once again they dusted off the old Corey Jinx and wrapped it around me like a straight jacket. Stupidly, I responded. I took the bait and wrote back.

         I think if I sat down with my father and four brothers and said “hey enough with the Jinx”, they would say it was all in fun. They would, rightly so, point out what an insufferably big mouth I had and that I was practically  begging for their ridicule. Point well taken, even if it was not actually made.

         So what’s the big deal?  The big deal is that when they play the Jinx card, they are putting a spotlight on a fault that I have been working pretty hard on. I know they don’t see it that way, I’m not sure I was fully aware of it until this week. You see, I have been trying to cultivate a more keen sense of humility, which in part means keeping my mouth shut on things I really don’t know much about. This is harder work than you might imagine. My oral cavity is a foot magnet.[3] Still, I’m working on it. So when I say something that I think of as pretty innocent like “RAAAYYYY!!!!!” and the reply I get is, “hey Corey remember all the times you said really stupid things about sports”, I find myself way back at the starting line of that journey. Part of me wants to lash out and say, “yeah, I remember that- thanks for the reminder, I appreciate it. Hey, while we are in the neighborhood, shall we go visit some of the moments you wish you could take back?”

         I took the bait and responded. Dumb, dumb, dumb…….. It’s like taking that old soup of sports angst that you were about to throw away and putting it on the front burner. I set the table by saying anything regarding sports. I wish it weren’t so. I wish I could acknowledge Ray’s achievement without inviting the Jinx Card. He is a class act. Now for the remainder of the NBA playoffs, win or lose, I will wear the scarlet J.

---

[1] I suppose it bears repeating that I support New England teams while my father and brothers support teams from New York.

[2] @Adam: just for the record, I think three years of silence is a huge achievement. I sincerely invite you to match that benchmark..........starting last Monday.

[3] I suppose it could be worse, but there is only so far I am willing to go with an orifice analogy.

“Stories are data with a soul” – Brene Brown

Recently I watched a YouTube snippet of Dr. Brene Brown speaking at a TED Conference[1]. She said a few things that resonated with me, besides how cool her name is. If you don’t know her, she is a researcher and a story-teller who studies issues like vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame.

I’ll cut right to the chase, Brown says that you can’t selectively numb. When you numb yourself or repress an emotion, it impacts the whole system. I’m pretty sure she is right about this, which is a shame. Why can’t I just be open-hearted and loving without also being angry and cantankerous? It would be so much easier just to live in a bubble of the good stuff. But the truth is, I find people who have banished negative feelings and just float along in a fluffy cloud of happy really annoying. Particularly if it is an evangelical-religious or new age cloud of fluffy-happy.

No, life is messy. Very, very messy and you have to get your hands dirty to live it fully. So here is my dilemma; I am like many men; socialized to repress anger, shame, and fear. Stuffing these emotions into an over-full cerebral closet has become a reflex. Like blinking, something makes me angry it gets buried before I even have a chance to see if it is a real threat. How does one begin to turn off that switch? It’s like a fist that has been clenched so long that the muscle memory of how to relax is gone. I’m not saying that I am an emotional cripple, far from it. But as I get deeper into the work of being in the real world, I am aware of this huge internal vault of repressed emotions. Right now I do not have the key, nor am I willing to use a sledge hammer hard enough to penetrate much further than the Celtics last losing streak. I have to admit, back-to-back losses last month against the Clippers and Philadelphia cut deep.

I hope you all forgive me for the posts that are likely to follow. I’m going mining for deep down emotions. It’s slow going and I’ve got a hard head to crack.

---

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Well worth the twenty minutes if you are interested in watching the whole thing.

Because He Can

         You know the old joke; “why does a dog lick……………..?”

         It’s more than just that he can. I’m sure there are humans out there who have achieved the necessary flexibility, but you just don’t see them casually reaching down to satisfy themselves while the rest of the household is trying to have a family meal.

Dogs might be on to something.

As far as I can tell, Conventional Dog Wisdom goes something like this:

-      Uninhibited equals Happy Dog  (see: scrotum licking, garbage eating, squirrel chasing, sniffing)

-      Inhibited equals Sad Dog (see: tail between the legs, it wasn’t me really, the cat made me do it)

I’m not advocating that we all become so uninhibited that we are free enough to put our hands down our pants before passing the rolls across the dinner table. I have a close relative who does this and I can assure you that it is not a pretty sight. We have to consider our impact upon others and measure our behavior in terms of that impact.  Never the less, I think letting your inner DAWG out might not be such a bad idea.

I say this with a nagging thought in mind. I spend a lot of time apologizing for the way I am built, tail between my legs. The world tends to beat down the dog, when all he is doing is being what nature has made him. AND there is so much potential to be a “bad” dog if you spend your entire day in a room with flowery wallpaper, paisley upholstered couches, and an Oriental Rug just begging to be marked.  How would I, and my figurative dog, feel if we where to reside in a more natural habitat? Would we even recognize it?

No wonder the dog finds solace in his ability to lick.

Ruby Slippers

When I first started blogging I used an analogy of a free fall to describe my journey into a new career or at least a new stage in my career. I’m still there.

I’ve made some progress. Tomorrow I start training to become a certified motorcycle instructor. It won’t pay the bills, but it will help. And of course, I’ve been writing a bit. Nothing spectacular, but at least the writing has been consistent. The things that have not made it into The Chalk have been really dogmatic. There is a lot of Dogma in my notebook and it is difficult to edit all of it out. You see, I have a strong inclination towards arrogance. I’m working on that and being dogmatic doesn’t really help things out.

With that said, I can’t help sharing an idea that has resonated with me for the last couple of weeks.

It came from my wife. We have started going to a yoga class together. As we drive to class she often reads quotes from Pema Chodron, just to get us into the spirit of things. The last one she read talked about how we all have this kind of internal jewel, which I interpreted as an innate goodness, that doesn’t ever lose it’s luster or brilliance. Our defense mechanisms, our shame, and our life experiences hide it, but it’s still there underneath those layers of yuck- undiminished. As I write this, that statement sounds very earthly crunchy. Just tap your heels three times and you will be a luminous creature. Maybe not, but it is a comfort to me to imagine that if I can do the hard work of becoming vulnerable and open-hearted than I might tap into my better self. It’s not a leap of imagination to say that when I am reacting to things from a defensive posture, I am surely not at my best. For the moment, I’m going to try and make that leap of faith that people have an innate goodness. It’s folly, I know, but the alternative is that humanity has no internal potential for compassion. That kind of thinking certainly makes me want to reach for my ruby slippers.

Does this question make my ass look big?

      I’m writing this with the sincere hope that my mother never reads this. She doesn’t know it, but she is a Jewish mother. Maybe not the kind you see in sitcoms, but underneath the Santa Fe, new age, sunset watching, pot smoking, sakki drinking, hippy skin lies the heart of a Jewish mother from Merrick, Long Island.

       Last week she crashed my party with Grandma Jane. When she heard I was heading out to Arizona to visit the family matriarch, she bought tickets and said she would try to coordinate her arrival with mine so we could share a cab. “You don’t mind waiting an hour or two for your mother- why spend money on two taxis” (do you see any question marks in those quotes?).[1] Once she arrived, she asked me if she had intruded upon my weekend with Grandma. If you ever hear a Jewish person say “OY”, now you know from whence it came.

       “Mom, I’m a nice Jewish boy from New York, there is only one answer to that question: of course not, you’re my mother, and Grandma is you’re mother. The doors to our family should always be wide open to each other”

I knew once I said the word “mother” what was coming next. It amounted to ‘was I a good mother?’. It comes up almost every time I see her, especially if she is feeling blue. We were in the car, going on an obligatory shopping trip in search of that nice shirt she saw in a Gap add. For the first time in ages I did not want to follow the script.

“Mom, you’re asking what my wife calls “do these make  my ass look fat” questions. There is no right answer. Say yes, and your calling her fat. Say no, and you are not being honest.  It’s just not fair to put anyone in that position. I’m not going there any more”

Pause…….

“You really like shopping with me, though, right?”

“Mom, does this question make my ass look big?” [2]

---

[1] Just for the record, she arrived a day after me, and I was able to spend almost twenty-four hours with Grandma Jane (see my last post Jane’s Choice). In fairness to Mig, these are not direct quotes- I am taking liberties here to make a point (and making footnotes to cover my ass in case she learns how to use a computer). 

[2] In fairness to me, this is a direct quote.

Jane's Choice

Last week I was in Scottsdale, Arizona, visiting my Grandmother. I still had something of a fire in the belly about the nature of resiliency, so I asked her about times in her life when she was faced with a crisis that she thought that she would not overcome. Mind you, this is a woman born in 1916. She has been THERE and chances are, she has done THAT. Without hesitation she recalled her early years of marriage. Her daughter had just turned two and her husband was gravely ill.

“I was told that Herb would not survive the year. Facing that, I made a decision to have another baby. I don’t think it was resilient, stupid maybe, because I had no idea how it would turn out. I believed Herb was going to die within six months. The decision was made on my own.”

Against all odds, Herb lived a long life, and their son is beloved. Jane thinks of it as the best decision of her life. She might not call it courageous, but it certainly looks like courage from where I am standing. It was something that she knew she had to do. No job, one young child, one dying husband, and Jane decides to have another baby. It seems uncharacteristic of this measured and deliberate woman that in her most trying moments she leaned on her emotional intuition. I’m not entirely sure she felt that it was even a choice. It was something she had to do to keep herself whole.

I’m on the cusp of that kind of moment in my own life. One that feels annihilating. My life as a teacher is coming to an abrupt end. But something is missing. Where did Jane find such clarity and sense of purpose? I don’t know about you, but when I try to pin down just what it is that would make me whole again I come up empty.

Jane’s resilient, almost defiant, act of self-preservation had an element of “calling” to it. Where does that come from? There was a piece of the impossible in Jane’s decision.

Resilience is a mystery to me, although I think I have some resources to call upon. One thing I can take away from Jane’s choice is that you don’t achieve the impossible by thinking about it. Courage, resilience, inspiration, these are unencumbered by the thought process.