ouch, ouch—feels like rain

The out-laws are headed down to see the cherry blossoms and perhaps a national park or two this weekend, just in time for 40 degree weather and what will probably be three straight days of non-stop rain. Now, the local weather people and online radar services have been wrong in the past (especially when it comes to precipitation predictions—oh, the schoolkid agony of over-ambitious snowfall forecasts!) but I’m pretty sure they’re right this time because my finger is killing me. Just like that crotchety old guy in stories whose description includes a grumpy demeanor and a bum leg, one of my old injuries always flares up when it’s about to rain.

My injury is not from World War I, or a noble duel over family honor, or even that time that Danny McNelis’ slide-tackled me in gym class in a pitiful exhibition of junior high manliness—it’s from basketball. Basketball, you say? When have you ever played basketball? Well, never really (unless you count that one humiliating experiment in college when I was guilted into playing an intra-mural game for the glory—make that absolute embarrassment—of our dorm) and the reason is simple: I suck big time. I can’t dribble, I can’t pass, I can’t shoot, I don’t look good in shorts. The sole effect that a basketball has on me is to render me into a retarded, uncoordinated mess of flailing limbs. More so than usual, even.

I’ve hated the game since junior high, when cold or rainy days forced us off the track or soccer field and indoors to dodgeball, basketball, and (though only threatened and never carried out) mixed-sex square dancing. The worst thing about it was that because space in the gym was so limited on days that weather precluded outdoor activities, court time had to be split between groups in the class. These groups naturally and unfailingly divided along the gender line, leaving the girls to cower in the bleachers during the boys’ game, hoping against hope that the teacher would lose track of time and leave us with a mercifully short game of our own. Playing in front of all those boys was terrifying. Self-conscious 8^th-grade girls forced to play a game for which none of them possessed any aptitude in front of boys their own age whose only method of exerting superiority over their peers was exuberant mockery and vicious name-calling? It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

We ran around the court, trying to ignore the catcalls from the sideline, shoving the ball from player to player, a frantic game of musical passing in which the person holding it when the teacher reached her breaking point of screaming at us to shoot it already! was forced to make a humiliating attempt at scoring. Inevitably, the ball fell short, or got knocked away by an opponent, or bounced off the backboard, or ricocheted off an innocent player who happened to be in the way at the time of the blind shot—it nearly never went in. And when the ball did occasionally make it through the hoop, only peals of sarcastic male laughter greeted the miracle. It was a cruel, misguided, and tragically late attempt to instill rudimentary athletic skills and confidence in a generation of young women whose only lesson from the game was how to initiate voluntary emotional detachment—the third, but never mentioned, survival mechanism of the fight-or-flight defense.

During one such game, when the scores didn’t have a hope of breaking through to double digits and the weaker girls had merely frozen in place on the court, too terrified to even raise their arms against the passes lobbed at them by other desperate players, the ball flew towards me unexpectedly and jammed the ring finger on my left hand. It went numb instantly, and I threw the ball angrily back into the fray. I was tired of the goddamn game and the fucking gym teacher who kept yelling at us to pick up the pace. I hated the stupid girls who weren’t even trying, who cowered away and squinted their eyes shut when the ball came anywhere near them. I was no good at all, but moving around helped me ignore the boys who never shut up, despite the teacher’s stern looks in their direction. She could have stopped them, but she didn’t and I knew she thought we deserved it. How could we be so bad at this? This was America! Michael Jordan was a household name! There was no excuse for this level of incompetence.

The ball came back to me and I looked around for the best candidate on which to unload it. Limp arms flapped defeatedly below slumped shoulders and my finger throbbed insistently. I was so tired of basketball. Damn Dr. Naismith and his stupid peach baskets. Fuck it, I thought, and I held my breath and shot from way outside the line. The ball arced steadily and swooshed perfectly through the hoop with a sharp thwap of unbelievable success. Everyone froze for a second, caught in the air—a glitch in the Matrix. It was events like these that made you realize nothing was real. But a moment later, taunting and laughter erupted from the bleachers. I seethed with embarrassment under their focus. The only thing worse than failure was success.

I kept my face down but the ball flew back towards my head and I was forced to catch it or let it break my nose. The other girls eyed my warily, afraid that I would single them out. I briskly dribbled the ball up to the three-point line, intending to fake them out and throw the ball to whoever was caught off-guard. But instead I shot it again. And it went in just as smoothly as before. Raucous noise exploded from the boys, but it had lost its affected timbre and taken on the high-pitched squeal of real excitement. Perhaps afraid of compromising their cultivated aura of masculinity, they quickly reverted back to mockery—singling me out, taunting me to repeat the shot, daring me to try. When I sunk the third one from behind the line they jumped up and cheered. I was officially a one-woman freak show, at once admired by, but fearful of, her public.

I can’t remember exactly how many shots I made that day (it was at least four, perhaps as many as six) but I didn’t miss one. All were three-pointers. All were utterly perfect. All begat renewed cries of disbelief from the boys. It was as if the entire section of bleachers had caught the vapors. They slapped their foreheads, fanned themselves with their hands, and shook their heads at my sudden amazing talent. Even I had to admit—I was awesome.

But it didn’t last. Maybe the gods had had their fun, maybe they feared that I’d use my new-found talent for evil instead of good, or maybe they merely grew jealous of their own creation, but before the game had even ended I looked down at my swollen hand and knew I was through. My left ring finger was purple and five times its normal size. I couldn’t feel it or move it. It was clearly broken. I waived it at my gym teacher and she whisked me away to call my mother and ice my hand.

I sat in the nurse’s office in my gym clothes while classes ended and students whisked by to new endeavors. I gazed down at my giant ugly finger, and moved the ice pack away to prod the inflamed tissue through the clammy skin. I knew that my brief, shining basketball career had ended forever, just as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had begun, and that its tragic end had nothing to do with my injured hand. I would never be that good again but I didn’t mind. For one fleeting moment I was awesome—and the boys knew it.