My girl has been going through high school basketball tryouts the past two nights. As her sister and I have been driving across town to pick her up, traveling the busy city streets in the early darkness that fall time brings, it's been impossible to not smell the basketball in the air. Each night as we've walked from the house to the car on our mission, I've noticed that the odor has gotten a little stronger and a little more enticing on each successive night. Even though we haven't stepped a foot in the gym, I can smell the gym. We haven't come near the locker room, but I can smell it. I can smell the leather. I can smell the heat. The sweat. The hustle. The intensity. I can smell the drive and want. I can smell the attitude and hunger. In all the crispness that these nights offer, I can smell basketball, and it just might be the best smell I ever taken in.
I may be wrong, but I imagine most people who have played know exactly what I'm talking about. They know the beauty of which I speak. It's a glorious odor, and it lingers in the thin air pure and true. A true baller can take as big and as deep as breathes as possible and still not get enough. It's just not possible. True ballers will always be left wanting more.
I often wonder what others parents who played sports and who loved it as much as I did think and feel as they sit in the darkness, waiting for their respective child to comes strolling out to the car after a practice. Each night as my girl comes walking out in her shorts and her hair all out of whack and in a sweaty mess, I think about all those nights after my own practices when I bolted out to the car of whoever I was leeching a ride off, exhausted, beat down, sore, hungry, and spent. Entirely and completely worn through, yet as happy and as at peace as I can ever remember. That was a magical time. Young, athletic, full of potential. Surrounded by friends. Surrounded by laughs. United in jokes and put downs. United in a purpose. That doesn't happen much anymore at my age, and I find that I miss it terribly at times.
That's why I'm so excited for my kid. I want her to feel half of what I did back then. I want her to always get goosebumps when she hears the squeaking of basketball shoes on the hardwood. Every time her nose picks up the smell of fresh popcorn floating down a school's hallway as she enters the building, I want her to remember how it felt on those Friday and Saturday nights, coming out of the locker room to those piping-hot first notes shooting out of the pep band trumpets. I want her to feel the same shots of adrenalin spiking down her spine as I did feeling those magnificent drum beats bouncing off the sticks of one Tony Christenham behind the kit blasting me straight in the face. I want her to know how it feels to hear little kids scream her name when she drains a bucket or hear a cheerleader belting out a "S-I-N-K, sink it!" in her honor as she stands at the free throw line. I want her to feel butterflies as big as jets crashing inside her stomach as she's lacing up her shoes. I want that and so much more for her because it's the top of world and everyone deserves at least some bit of time there.
I wish there was a way to bottle up the smell of basketball, but I suppose that would spoil the magic. I suppose it would make these fall nights a little less special. I suppose there's much to be said for said for reveling in the here and now and not trying to reproduce what's special whenever the mood strikes. I suppose I find these nights and this feeling that basketball produces so special because it's not available all year round and not everyone feels the same way as I do. Maybe it's just me who gets this goofy about a "smell" that doesn't really exist anywhere but in my mind, but somehow I doubt it.
I may be wrong, but I imagine most people who have played know exactly what I'm talking about. They know the beauty of which I speak. It's a glorious odor, and it lingers in the thin air pure and true. A true baller can take as big and as deep as breathes as possible and still not get enough. It's just not possible. True ballers will always be left wanting more.
I often wonder what others parents who played sports and who loved it as much as I did think and feel as they sit in the darkness, waiting for their respective child to comes strolling out to the car after a practice. Each night as my girl comes walking out in her shorts and her hair all out of whack and in a sweaty mess, I think about all those nights after my own practices when I bolted out to the car of whoever I was leeching a ride off, exhausted, beat down, sore, hungry, and spent. Entirely and completely worn through, yet as happy and as at peace as I can ever remember. That was a magical time. Young, athletic, full of potential. Surrounded by friends. Surrounded by laughs. United in jokes and put downs. United in a purpose. That doesn't happen much anymore at my age, and I find that I miss it terribly at times.
That's why I'm so excited for my kid. I want her to feel half of what I did back then. I want her to always get goosebumps when she hears the squeaking of basketball shoes on the hardwood. Every time her nose picks up the smell of fresh popcorn floating down a school's hallway as she enters the building, I want her to remember how it felt on those Friday and Saturday nights, coming out of the locker room to those piping-hot first notes shooting out of the pep band trumpets. I want her to feel the same shots of adrenalin spiking down her spine as I did feeling those magnificent drum beats bouncing off the sticks of one Tony Christenham behind the kit blasting me straight in the face. I want her to know how it feels to hear little kids scream her name when she drains a bucket or hear a cheerleader belting out a "S-I-N-K, sink it!" in her honor as she stands at the free throw line. I want her to feel butterflies as big as jets crashing inside her stomach as she's lacing up her shoes. I want that and so much more for her because it's the top of world and everyone deserves at least some bit of time there.
I wish there was a way to bottle up the smell of basketball, but I suppose that would spoil the magic. I suppose it would make these fall nights a little less special. I suppose there's much to be said for said for reveling in the here and now and not trying to reproduce what's special whenever the mood strikes. I suppose I find these nights and this feeling that basketball produces so special because it's not available all year round and not everyone feels the same way as I do. Maybe it's just me who gets this goofy about a "smell" that doesn't really exist anywhere but in my mind, but somehow I doubt it.
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