Around the World
I had some free time when I was a kid. I'd spend some of it skateboarding, until my skateboarder friends got cars and girlfriends and jobs to support their snowboarding habit. Then I tried rollerblading, but I wore the wheels down and decided rollerskis were closer to Nordic skiing than rollerblades. Then soccer, then running, then a mountain bike, then fly fishing, biking, skiing...there's more, of course. But listing isn't the point. At the far end of the spectrum, windsurfing.
Closer to reality, shooting hoops.
I learned how to play basketball by shooting buckets after school, marking eight points on an imaginary map, (my parent's driveway) and playing Around the World. If I made it around once, I had to make it back, allowing myself one free throw for every shot.
That's eight baskets from point A to point B; and eight baskets back to point A.
I also played Pig, Horse and Buffalo Horse, but never dared to play a game of intramural basketball, or for the love of God, to actually try out for a team. Terrifying, the thought of my private accomplishment to be pulled onto the lit floor of the gymnasium and torn asunder by the trained masses of Ballers.
After some time, my parent's saw the basketball hoop as the only way to get me out of the house, a tactic they wisely and tactfully employed by tearing down the hoop and offering the local basketball courts as refuge. I was a mere thirty years old. Awhile back, I had to make a change in my place of residence, moving from a place as trusted and reverential as that driveway to an unknown and well lit court. The first thing a random passerby took from the curb, among my belongings, was my basketball, worn smooth and soft to the touch.
Then they took my Philodendrons. And my spathiphyllum.
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