Tuesday, February 01, 2005
The moment
The invitation came as a surprise yesterday morning: one of the girls on the 8th grade basketball team had backed out of the team's trip to Knoxville to watch the Tennessee/Georgia game, and the coach wondered if I'd be interested in taking her place.
A little background. I've been coming to the girls' games this year because the 8th grade team is comprised almost exclusively of the best students who ever took my class, students I've taught all three of the years I've been here, surrogate kids for the children of my own that I don't have. They seemed genuinely pleased when I'd show up for their games; they asked me to come to their away games, which I did, and even to their practices, which I also did. When my birthday came last week, the entire team signed a birthday card to me, with a team photo. That card is now perhaps my most prized possession.
So yes, all things considered, I was very interested in going with them.
It entailed a two-hour drive to Knoxville, a two and a half-hour game tipping off at 7pm, and another two-hour drive home, on a school night. It meant being out of the house during a time I'm normally focused on resting and recuperating for the next day. But it also meant getting to spend time and make memories with my kids and their families.
So we left the school at about 3:30 and made our way up 411 and 129 North, through parts of Tennessee I'd never seen. I rode with the team's coach, two of the players, and one of the team moms. They talked; I listened.
At the arena, the team went down to the cafeteria to eat, while the rest of us went to find seats. I ended up a few rows above and behind anybody from our group, on the Tennessee end of the court, almost directly behind the goal. It was a good vantage point for watching the cheerleaders warm up... you get no idea, watching on television, how heart-stoppingly high those girls get thrown: they were parallel to the ground and as far up as the shot clock. Fourteen, fifteen feet, easily. A tense moment or two as a girl would go up and come back down off-vertical, arcing several feet to one side or the other and making the waiting team of male cheerleaders shuffle over to catch her. Turns out Tennessee's squad recently won second place in a national competition. I'd like to see what the first-place winners were capable of.
But there was no one around me that I knew. I scanned the crowd as it gathered for signs of people I knew. No joy. Until, with about ten minutes left till tip-off, I saw them: on the far side of the arena and on the upper deck. Miles away. But I wasn't going to sit with strangers while my kids were somewhere in the building, so I made the pilgrimage along with a student who'd been sitting a few rows down. We got there with five minutes left till tip-off and settled in.
Surprising things about basketball in big arenas: the court looks much smaller in real life than it does on TV, while the arena looks much bigger. And I'd forgotten the noise a crowd at a sporting event is able to produce.
The player intros for Tennessee were preceded by fireworks spouting from the goals; flashing, whirling spotlights; the signatures of the players spinning across the floor, projected in white light. Not really the sort of thing that impresses me anymore... until the 14 year-old girl in front of me, one of my best students from the first group I taught this year, leaned back and said "That's awesome! Can we get fireworks too, when they introduce us at our games?"
I don't see why not, unless Crazy Joe's sold out of sparklers.
At first, I had to keep reminding myself to watch the game on the floor instead of on the giant TV screens in the corners. Another interesting difference between TV basketball and live basketball: how much you miss, the off-ball play and the transition game after baskets. TV butchers these aspects of the game as often as not with close-ups of the ball handler and instant replay of made shots; these are entertaining, of course, but they disrupt the natural flow of play. Watching basketball on TV is a lot like watching movies on TV: they're both constantly interrupted with interjections that are occasionally informative but often useless.
Perhaps I'm too harsh -- those replays do have their place, when officials make calls on things impossible to see from the nosebleeds. And I wish I'd seen the replay of the moment when Tennessee guard Loree Moore got her nose broken going for a rebound. All we saw was that she went down and stayed down for what seemed an eternity while Tennessee coaches and medical personnel gathered around her. When she was taken off the floor in a wheelchair, I was momentarily afraid she'd suffered some sort of career-ending injury... but then I figured she would've been carried off on a stretcher if things were that bad. It wasn't until earlier today I found out what happened and the extent of the damage.
Our girls were fairly evenly split in their allegiances between the competing schools. We're in Georgia, but close enough to the line that Tennessee has a sizeable contingent of fans among us. On several occasions, my loyalties were called into question by one side or the other, or both at once, in conversations that went like this:
Mr. Tilson, are you cheering for Tennessee?
Well, yes; yes, I am.
I thought you were for Georgia.
Yes, I am.
What?
I don't really care, I just want a good game.
Oh, okay.
And it was a good game, nip and tuck, for the first half. Tennessee started pulling away in the second half and never looked back. And when Moore went down, it sealed the deal; Tennessee got mad and played with greater intensity than before. It was beautiful to watch, plenty of hustle and tremendous skill on display at both ends of the court, but it was clear there was no way Georgia was going to claw back.
(Tennessee's players weren't the only ones mad, of course; their fans were fit to be tied. A guy on the deck below us yelled fruitlessly at the refs the whole time Moore lay on the floor, accusing them of being everything but Christians and of allowing the game to get out of hand -- I remember thinking that if he'd wanted to see truly bad officiating, so bad as to be dangerous, he should've come to our game of the Tuesday before. His tirade prompted one of the girls to wonder if he was drunk, and to propose going down there to ask him if he was. Such are the workings of the teen-aged mind. I told her he'd just say No, I'm not drunk, you're the one that's drunk, and that satisfied her until the guy sat down and the whole thing was forgotten.)
Of course, I'd say I only spent about 60 or 70 percent of my time watching the game. The rest was taken up with monitoring the comings and goings of a dozen teens (none of them really my responsibility, technically, but you worry anyway, when they're your kids) and talking to them.
And roughhousing with them. Because foam Tennessee sticks were provided free to everyone entering the arena, and they made such formidable harmless weapons. I passed on them at first, until the boy who moved with me from the arena pit to the upper deck started hitting me with his, at which point I armed myself to retaliate. I did, and considered the whole thing settled; when we joined the rest of our group on the upper deck, I gave my stick to one of the girls and forgot about it until momentarily
WHAP
upside the head. And I looked and beheld the boy grinning at me from a couple of empty seats down. And I turned to the girl who had the stick.
Let me have that back for a minute.
Okay.
WHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAP
I believe in massive retaliation. Revenge overkill. The kid even stopped hitting me, at least until I gave the stick back to the girls.
If there was anybody in the world happier last night than me, I'd love to know how. There are some moments in life that transcend the simple and routine concepts of fun or enjoyment or pleasure to become something greater: moments of joy that have the power to sustain for years to come. They're moments that make you grateful to have been alive just for that moment; that cause you to thank God for letting you be here, right here, in this place, with these people, tonight. When darker, colder times come -- as they always do -- you pull that moment from its box in your memory and turn it over and over in your mind, and let its perfection refresh you and strengthen you to go on. I'll be turning to this one, I'm sure, for many years to come.
They'll be doing it again, and I hope to go with them, at the end of February. Whether the moment can happen again remains to be seen; such moments strongly resist replication. And even if it can happen again, the day will come when these kids will be gone from my life to their high school and college days and their lives beyond, and all I can hope for them is that they may someday be as happy as they've made me.
|
A little background. I've been coming to the girls' games this year because the 8th grade team is comprised almost exclusively of the best students who ever took my class, students I've taught all three of the years I've been here, surrogate kids for the children of my own that I don't have. They seemed genuinely pleased when I'd show up for their games; they asked me to come to their away games, which I did, and even to their practices, which I also did. When my birthday came last week, the entire team signed a birthday card to me, with a team photo. That card is now perhaps my most prized possession.
So yes, all things considered, I was very interested in going with them.
It entailed a two-hour drive to Knoxville, a two and a half-hour game tipping off at 7pm, and another two-hour drive home, on a school night. It meant being out of the house during a time I'm normally focused on resting and recuperating for the next day. But it also meant getting to spend time and make memories with my kids and their families.
So we left the school at about 3:30 and made our way up 411 and 129 North, through parts of Tennessee I'd never seen. I rode with the team's coach, two of the players, and one of the team moms. They talked; I listened.
At the arena, the team went down to the cafeteria to eat, while the rest of us went to find seats. I ended up a few rows above and behind anybody from our group, on the Tennessee end of the court, almost directly behind the goal. It was a good vantage point for watching the cheerleaders warm up... you get no idea, watching on television, how heart-stoppingly high those girls get thrown: they were parallel to the ground and as far up as the shot clock. Fourteen, fifteen feet, easily. A tense moment or two as a girl would go up and come back down off-vertical, arcing several feet to one side or the other and making the waiting team of male cheerleaders shuffle over to catch her. Turns out Tennessee's squad recently won second place in a national competition. I'd like to see what the first-place winners were capable of.
But there was no one around me that I knew. I scanned the crowd as it gathered for signs of people I knew. No joy. Until, with about ten minutes left till tip-off, I saw them: on the far side of the arena and on the upper deck. Miles away. But I wasn't going to sit with strangers while my kids were somewhere in the building, so I made the pilgrimage along with a student who'd been sitting a few rows down. We got there with five minutes left till tip-off and settled in.
Surprising things about basketball in big arenas: the court looks much smaller in real life than it does on TV, while the arena looks much bigger. And I'd forgotten the noise a crowd at a sporting event is able to produce.
The player intros for Tennessee were preceded by fireworks spouting from the goals; flashing, whirling spotlights; the signatures of the players spinning across the floor, projected in white light. Not really the sort of thing that impresses me anymore... until the 14 year-old girl in front of me, one of my best students from the first group I taught this year, leaned back and said "That's awesome! Can we get fireworks too, when they introduce us at our games?"
I don't see why not, unless Crazy Joe's sold out of sparklers.
At first, I had to keep reminding myself to watch the game on the floor instead of on the giant TV screens in the corners. Another interesting difference between TV basketball and live basketball: how much you miss, the off-ball play and the transition game after baskets. TV butchers these aspects of the game as often as not with close-ups of the ball handler and instant replay of made shots; these are entertaining, of course, but they disrupt the natural flow of play. Watching basketball on TV is a lot like watching movies on TV: they're both constantly interrupted with interjections that are occasionally informative but often useless.
Perhaps I'm too harsh -- those replays do have their place, when officials make calls on things impossible to see from the nosebleeds. And I wish I'd seen the replay of the moment when Tennessee guard Loree Moore got her nose broken going for a rebound. All we saw was that she went down and stayed down for what seemed an eternity while Tennessee coaches and medical personnel gathered around her. When she was taken off the floor in a wheelchair, I was momentarily afraid she'd suffered some sort of career-ending injury... but then I figured she would've been carried off on a stretcher if things were that bad. It wasn't until earlier today I found out what happened and the extent of the damage.
Our girls were fairly evenly split in their allegiances between the competing schools. We're in Georgia, but close enough to the line that Tennessee has a sizeable contingent of fans among us. On several occasions, my loyalties were called into question by one side or the other, or both at once, in conversations that went like this:
Mr. Tilson, are you cheering for Tennessee?
Well, yes; yes, I am.
I thought you were for Georgia.
Yes, I am.
What?
I don't really care, I just want a good game.
Oh, okay.
And it was a good game, nip and tuck, for the first half. Tennessee started pulling away in the second half and never looked back. And when Moore went down, it sealed the deal; Tennessee got mad and played with greater intensity than before. It was beautiful to watch, plenty of hustle and tremendous skill on display at both ends of the court, but it was clear there was no way Georgia was going to claw back.
(Tennessee's players weren't the only ones mad, of course; their fans were fit to be tied. A guy on the deck below us yelled fruitlessly at the refs the whole time Moore lay on the floor, accusing them of being everything but Christians and of allowing the game to get out of hand -- I remember thinking that if he'd wanted to see truly bad officiating, so bad as to be dangerous, he should've come to our game of the Tuesday before. His tirade prompted one of the girls to wonder if he was drunk, and to propose going down there to ask him if he was. Such are the workings of the teen-aged mind. I told her he'd just say No, I'm not drunk, you're the one that's drunk, and that satisfied her until the guy sat down and the whole thing was forgotten.)
Of course, I'd say I only spent about 60 or 70 percent of my time watching the game. The rest was taken up with monitoring the comings and goings of a dozen teens (none of them really my responsibility, technically, but you worry anyway, when they're your kids) and talking to them.
And roughhousing with them. Because foam Tennessee sticks were provided free to everyone entering the arena, and they made such formidable harmless weapons. I passed on them at first, until the boy who moved with me from the arena pit to the upper deck started hitting me with his, at which point I armed myself to retaliate. I did, and considered the whole thing settled; when we joined the rest of our group on the upper deck, I gave my stick to one of the girls and forgot about it until momentarily
WHAP
upside the head. And I looked and beheld the boy grinning at me from a couple of empty seats down. And I turned to the girl who had the stick.
Let me have that back for a minute.
Okay.
WHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAP
I believe in massive retaliation. Revenge overkill. The kid even stopped hitting me, at least until I gave the stick back to the girls.
If there was anybody in the world happier last night than me, I'd love to know how. There are some moments in life that transcend the simple and routine concepts of fun or enjoyment or pleasure to become something greater: moments of joy that have the power to sustain for years to come. They're moments that make you grateful to have been alive just for that moment; that cause you to thank God for letting you be here, right here, in this place, with these people, tonight. When darker, colder times come -- as they always do -- you pull that moment from its box in your memory and turn it over and over in your mind, and let its perfection refresh you and strengthen you to go on. I'll be turning to this one, I'm sure, for many years to come.
They'll be doing it again, and I hope to go with them, at the end of February. Whether the moment can happen again remains to be seen; such moments strongly resist replication. And even if it can happen again, the day will come when these kids will be gone from my life to their high school and college days and their lives beyond, and all I can hope for them is that they may someday be as happy as they've made me.
Comments:
Post a Comment
