by Kevin Burton
My most recent place of employment was a three-story church, which had, on the third floor, a gymnasium.
I almost never went up there because my work was on the other two floors. But the whole time I worked there, there was a basketball on the floor, in the office, behind the middle desk. I regarded the ball from time to time, the way you look at the buildings you pass on your daily commute, the shops you have no interest in visiting.
The church eventually eliminated my position, in an entirely-reasonable and long-overdue cost-cutting move.
I had a month to work, then a week.
Sometime during that last week, I picked up the ball and took it up to the gymnasium. It had a regulation-sized basketball court. For reasons I can’t explain I was moved to shoot a few hoops. Very few actually.
I went to the basket at the far end and shot about a 14-footer and missed. I then moved in to about eight feet and made a shot. And that was that.
Growing up at the Ohio State School for the Blind, especially as a junior and senior I lived in the gym. Much of that time I spent alone in there, shooting baskets, not really dreaming of glory. I was honing a craft I had no hope of plying anywhere.
The two side doors that led to the gym, at the southwest and southeast corners, I would sometimes leave open just a crack, so I could gain entrance to my hoops haven when the spirit moved me.
A few times I went at night. I knew how to turn on the lights. The switches were just inside the door of the boys locker room. I can still hear that series of clicks as I turned on the light in the otherwise silent gym.
I imagined myself evading detection. But I am sure various adults knew I was in there and said “thank God, let him work off some energy.”
Much to my annoyance, there were times when only one of the basketball would actually bounce. Some had pouches bulging out of their sides, others were deflated.
Once in a while I could dunk, barely. Nothing thunderous for sure. Also once in a while I had an audience of one. A girl named Jeannie would come in and watch me.
I don’t remember my first jump shot. It may have been at one of my other schools; I didn’t matriculate at the blind school until 4th grade.
Somehow I felt the need to remember the last one.
Actually I can’t say for sure that 8-footer at the church was my last shot. There cold be some reason for me to play again sometime. Maybe shooting with the grandkids. Who knows?
And that job at the church, I also can’t say it will end of being my final job. I can say my hunger for the rat race is now very close to zero. But you never know.
But there is a first time and a last time for everything in life. One of these days I will hear “Waterloo” by ABBA, and it will be the last time I ever hear it. I won’t know it’s the last time when it happens of course.
I did play in one basketball game that sort of counted for something. My class, played a game against the class behind us as a fundraiser. Maybe we were ninth graders against the 8th grade? Something like that. Can’t quite recall.
But we won, 55-24 and I scored 31 points. I was literally the difference in the game.
I haven’t been the difference in any game or anything else, for a long, long time now. It feels weird. I feel deflated, like the basketballs at the blind school.
I didn’t watch the NCAA Tournament Selection Show Sunday. That felt weird too. Most of my adult life that has been appointment television and God help anybody who interrupted me as I was scrawling down the names of the teams, as fast as the talking heads could recite them.
But Both Wichita State and Dayton had lost their respective conference championship games earlier in the day. So I no longer had a dog in the hunt. (Both made the NIT and I will follow them as far as they go in that.)
But as for me, my final (?) basketball stat line: 1 for 2, one rebound, no assists.
Turn out the lights.
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