Skip to main content

The Basketball Team


The Basketball Team
Some people that know me. May have known that it took me four tryouts to make a basketball team as a child. Yep, it was seventh grade rec. I didn’t make it. I tried out for the eighth grade middle school team, didn’t make it. And it was quite a small town that I was residing in then.  My class in eighth grade was about sixty-two students in all. I gave it rest. Then I tried out again as a junior in high school. I didn’t make it.

Finally, in my senior year of high school, in a class of two hundred and sixty-two.  It was a regional high school. I made the varsity basketball team. Barely. Before I did, I can say this. I liked the kids who were on the team before I’d even made a team. I wasn’t friends with anybody on any of the teams I’d tried out for. I was the kid who kept to themselves, for the most part.

All the teams, the ones I didn’t make and the one I did make, I respected the results. I respected the individuals that made up all the teams. Three of the five coaches, deep down I didn’t care for their attitude in general. They were people I knew outside of the tryouts. And later on in life, I found out I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Yet, I went about my business and landed right where I should of, with the coach and his assistant who really understood me.  That appears to be quite ironic to me. How everything landed with such perfect timing for me.

Those years that I didn’t make the basketball teams, I had no animosity towards the teams, nor the children that made those teams. I knew those picked over me, were good at the game of basketball. I knew I was not built for basketball. Yet, I tried.  And as much as it hurt to fail, I still tried. I didn’t give up.  And I had no ill-will towards those that made it. And neither to those who gave me a failing grade in the tryouts. As well, I was awed by the athleticism of others that I did not have. Their athleticism, was the attraction that made me want to try out over and over and over again.  As well, I knew others who’d not made the basketball teams I’d tried out for. I practically felt just as bad for them as I did myself for my not making the teams.

What this all boils down to is what I have witnessed. Something that was despicable among anyone over the age of twelve. I saw ADULTS posting on social media, ‘if their candidate didn’t get the vote… they would never vote again.’ Well, that is what I would call in my day, ‘A SISSY’. ‘A MAMA’s Boy’. A BABY. SPOILED ROTTEN. There are plenty of derogatory words and phrases I could use here.  That my husband has heard.  I take the filter off with my hubby of over thirty-six years, and some special friends too.
In conclusion, if you can vote. If you’ve been complaining about who’s in charge or in office(s). And you don’t vote… You Are a SISSY! Because WE the PEOPLE, will eventually land right where WE should without you.  It’s not about you.  It’s about WE the PEOPLE… THE TEAM.---Jody-Lynn Reicher  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Completion of Humanness

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow
2 comments
Read more

In My World

As I finish putting away the week's groceries, I contemplate other's lives. Aside from my two daughters,  I consider what may be other's lives.  How they have conducted their lives over the past two years.  This is a thought not unusual for me to have. Yet, it occurs more often than not. Especially  now, as the population is probably feeling ever more irked. Regarding perhaps. their illusion of any lack of their freedom. But isn't that what life is about? The illusion of who we are. What we are about. Where we stand on the planet. Who we love. And who loves us. Our significance. Couldn't we imagine if this were all just an illusion? Sounds like a "Twighlight Zone" episode, perhaps. My aim here, are the thoughts of reckoning. I'll explain why I'm claiming such a thing. For about twenty-eight years of a career in dealing with injured athletes,  pain patients, chronically ill and the terminally ill. I found that there were many people who lied to
Post a Comment
Read more

It Follows Me...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know.
Post a Comment
Read more