One of the last things I recall about living in Tustin was attending a three-day camp with the rest of my sixth grade class. We were staying overnight for two nights in cabins and had a number of activities that we could participate in. There were people swimming, canoeing, playing volleyball and basketball. One of the memorable parts of the camp was learning about drugs. We learned about marijuana, which I had literally never heard of before. We learned about the effects of alcohol. We learned about barbiturates. When they named several barbiturates, I piped up when I heard the name of one I knew. “I’ll allergic to phenobarbital!”
The camp presenter laughed and said, “I don’t think so. You’re probably thinking of something else.” But no, I am allergic to phenobarbital. I’ve been filling it out on forms my whole life. As it turns out, I was given phenobarbital to keep me docile after I had surgery when I was four years old. It did not work, as I had seizures because of it. And that’s how I know. Oh, those experimental 60s!
But the key memory I have of the camp defined pretty much my entire adult life, and I can’t believe I almost forgot to include it in my memories. I was playing basketball with a bunch of kids that I didn’t know. The sixth grades from three different elementary schools were all staying at the camp at the same time. I was no great shakes at basketball then. I had played organized basketball for exactly one practice before my stepfather forced me to quit in the winter of 1976. As mediocre as I was, I was still athletic and very tall. But as we played, I noticed a kid trying to shoot baskets off to the side of the basketball court. He was receiving a bunch of verbal abuse from some of the more talented kids on the court, and it really made me angry. I didn’t like seeing him get bullied like that. So, I stopped playing with the jerks and went over to play with that kid.
I don’t know what his disability was. I had no background for that. He was verbal, though impaired, but he clearly had severe coordination problems. He was having trouble even getting the ball up to the rim. I spent half an hour helping him to figure out how to make a basket. We got his hand directly behind the ball so he would have enough strength to get it up there, and then it was a matter of accuracy. Aiming for a spot on the backboard was the key. All the while, they boys were still taunting him…and me. I told the kid to ignore them and we kept going.
Finally, the ball went in. He cheered. And I’m not kidding, I thought he was going to cry. And then I thought I was going to cry. I had never felt anything like that in my whole life. It was like a flood of warmth overcame me. I put the ball back in his hands and he did it again. I had never seen such joy in a human being in my life, and I’m not sure I had felt that for myself, at least not in the same way. I had helped someone feel good about themselves. The kid thanked me over and over again, and I just nodded and said it was no big deal. Well, it turned out it was a very big deal for both of us. He had new confidence, and I had a new avocation. I wanted to teach people. I wanted to have that feeling again and again. It was addictive, and a far better addiction than any drug…even phenobarbital.
Most of the autumn passed with me still feeling like an outsider, someone without a place in the community I called home. Basketball changed all that. I had arrived in Mesick too late in the summer to join a new Little League baseball team, so the kids in my class never saw that I could play sports. Most of our PE time was spend playing either dodgeball, volleyball, or floor hockey. We even did trampoline jumping. But when basketball came around, I wasn’t very good.
I had never played organized basketball outside of one practice in sixth grade in the upper peninsula. I had asked if I could join the basketball team, and Mom and Steve said I could, as long as I kept up with my daily chores. Well, I didn’t shovel the driveway cleanly enough for Steve’s tastes, so I was forced to quit after the first practice. It was a trap even Admiral Ackbar could have seen coming, but I was too naive to know that I had been set up to fail. They just didn’t want to pick me up from basketball practice.
When it came time to try out for basketball in Mesick, I had little experience. I had no shooting form whatsoever. I pushed the ball with both hands together in front of me. The only thing I had going for me is that I was tall and I could jump. I even shot layups off the wrong foot. But after practice one day, one of the eighth graders took me aside and taught me to shoot, how to support the ball with my left hand and shoot with my right, with my middle finger centered on the ball, and to follow all the way through with a loose wrist at the end to put the proper backspin on the ball. It was simple, but it worked. My grandma agreed to buy me a basketball as an early birthday present, and I knew which one I needed.
1977 Spalding Basketball Ad, art by Jack Davis
This ad appeared on almost every comic book in 1977, and it was effective. I got a rubber ball and I would lie down on my back and simulate the mechanics of the shot I had learned, over and over and over again. I would probably practice that a thousand times a day, lying on the bed in my tiny bedroom. I would dribble it all the way to school (I walked) and back.
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but believe me, it bears repeating. I sweated. A lot. I had to be careful of how active I got in the gym after lunch, when we would gather to blow off steam, because I would pit out my shirts in just a few minutes. I tried to avoid playing basketball full-tilt, instead playing Horse or Pig, or just shooting free throws. But at basketball practice, there was a lot of running and there was simply no way to avoid it. It didn’t matter to anyone because I was playing hard. It wasn’t until we had a game one time that I even had to think about it.
Our uniforms consisted of simple orange t-shirts with black numbers on them. Nothing fancy for junior high. We wore whatever shorts we owned. For me, that was cutoff jeans. I had never owned any other kind of shorts. And coincidentally, the conference our school was in had two other schools whose colors were orange and black. That’s right, three out of eight teams had the same team colors. Well, we were playing one of those teams, Kingsley, and their eighth graders wore the same uniform t-shirts that ours did. So, to be different, our eighth graders had to wear our seventh grade uniforms after the game was over. I gave up my orange t-shirt, only to have the eighth grade coach hold it up in front of the whole crowd, showing the gigantic dark circles of sweat that I had left under the arms. I was embarrassed and angry. What else was I supposed to do, not play as hard as I could? That was (and is) not me. When I went to do something, I went all out. I left it all on the court. And if I was going to be humiliated for this effort, I was done. This soured the whole basketball experience for me.
After the season ended, I didn’t want anything to do with basketball, ever again. I didn’t even attend the season-ending banquet; in fact, I didn’t tell anyone in my family they were having one. The next Monday at school, all of my teammates were on me, asking why I didn’t go to the banquet. I said I didn’t want to play basketball anymore, and there wasn’t much point. They told me that I had received the “Most Improved Player” award in my absence. Me? I had won an award? They reassured me that I had done a great job during the season and that I was as much a part of the team as anyone else. I had found acceptance.
I went to talk to the coach and he was also surprised that I hadn’t come to the banquet. I explained that I didn’t think I was any good, and he told me that I had improved so much that I had gone from being almost the worst player to the third-best player in just six weeks! Everything about being embarrassed by the sweat stains was instantly forgotten. That’s how important honest praise was to me back then. I thanked him profusely and promised to try even harder next year.
And how did that turn out? Well, just six years later…
Never underestimate the power of sincere praise for a kid with low self-esteem.
