Day 34: Being Humbled

In an odd way, I think being humbled once in a while is an incredibly positive experience. I use “humbling” in the sense of being knocked down a peg or two or having it pointed out that you’re not any more special than the slob standing next to you in line. I don’t mean “humbling” in the sense of being told you’re ugly or bald or you can’t sing or your golf game sucks. I don’t know anything about that. (cough)

Periodically, I’ve told my kids a story about being humbled in 7^th grade by my basketball coach, a ninja where the art of humbling was concerned. After the final Friday practice before our first game on Monday, he came to me in the locker room and told me I would be starting at point guard. One important condition, he said, was that I wasn’t to shoot—at all. I was out there to pass. He told me that over the weekend he would be driving by my house periodically to make sure that was the only I was practicing. Shooting was a no-no. Only passes off the side of the house.

True to his word, he drove by multiple times. Each time he found me doing only what he had instructed. When the game rolled around, he asked if I remembered his instructions. I said yes. He also told me under no uncertain terms was I to go below the free throw line when we were on offense because I was to be the first one back on defense. Hyped and full of myself, I said, “Sure thing.”

30 seconds in, I passed the ball to a teammate who put up a shot. Hyped and full of myself, I sprinted to the basket to put the rebound back in for a basket, only the ball bounce off the rim long to the other team, which proceeded to score an uncontested layup because, you guessed it, yours truly trekked below the free throw line. By the time the ball had come out of the night, I had barely made it back to half court.

40 seconds in, coach yanked me out of the game, asked in so many words if I had peanut butter for brains, and promptly exiled me to the end of the bench before I could answer. There I stayed the rest of that game and the next one, too.

“You know what I did?” I’d ask my kids.

“What?”

“I never went below the free throw line again.”

To this day, I respect the hell out of what coach did that day and the lessons he handed me. He humbled me, and I had it coming. I got caught up in the prestige of being a “starter” when what I should have been caught up in was making sure I did what a “starter” was supposed to do—perform.

Being humbled isn’t easy for most people I’ve found. I’m prideful (and just insecure) enough to not always take being knocked on my ass with the appreciation it probably deserves. Sometimes, it’s not been until much further down the road when the fog of anger and hurt has lifted that I’ve even been able to see the positives in taking some deserved lumps. In a lot of ways, it seems there aren’t many guys like coach around who are capable of giving a kid a hard life lesson. In a lot of way, the opportunity to even do so doesn’t exist. I miss the old-school ways of yesteryear in a lot of ways. I’ve never been in favor of belittling a kid, which I saw a little too much of growing up by all walks of people, but I find myself missing the days when kids seemingly weren’t the center of the universe simply because they’re able to eat, sleep, and breath but instead had to earn the right to be respected before they could demand it.