Twelve kids and a ball...

“But it is our duty, my young friends, to

resist old age; to compensate for its

defects by a watchful care.”

- Marcus Cicero On Old Age

Twelve youngsters, a coach and an assistant were framed in the photograph.

The boys had suited up for a team picture in their gold uniforms, with black piping and numbers. The shorts were short – well above the knee – in the style of the day.  Each had on a pair of horizontally stripped black and gold knee socks over which were cotton, above the ankle, athletic socks, and they ALL wore Converse All Star basketball shoes.

The taller boys knelt in the back with the shorter sitting cross-legged on the floor in the front. It was the Fairmont, West Virginia Junior High School basketball team from the 1961-1962 Season.

Nineteen sixty-two saw the death of actress Marilyn Monroe… Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show…To Kill a Mockingbird was a popular new film…John Glenn orbited the earth, and there was talk of war with Russia when it was discovered they had secretly decided to place nuclear-armed ballistic missiles on the Island of Cuba.

While the photo was taken straight on, all of the boys and coach were glancing to their left, as though an intruder had unexpectedly entered the gym and interrupted the photo shoot. The style was in vogue at the time, but looking at this gathering of youngsters, it looks a little odd.

Every one of them wanted to be a starter, and every one of them wanted to be a star.  Each kid was sure he had what it took to excel in the game – as they should have. After all, what coach wants ball players who do not want to succeed?

The youngster, in the back on the right, was wearing the number 54, just one digit short of the number of years it has been since those boys sat in that gym, on that street in that town, with little on their minds other than the game and the season ahead of them. 

As the years in the lives of these boys moved on to high school, six or so of them continued to play the game through the Darwinian process of natural selection...that, of course, would be in the future. For now, it was ‘game on.’

The kid in the back row on the far right, number 54, was one of the boys who continued the game in high school. It wouldn’t be until the next level of play that his dreams of collegiate basketball would slip away to more skilled and gifted athletes than he...that youngster was me.

In fact, the fellow right beside me emerged as one of the best high school players in the country; was heavily recruited and had a successful career at North Carolina State University…water they say, finds its level.

There is no memory of the exact number of wins and losses that year, but it was a good year for basketball at Fairmont Junior High School, adding ripples of confidence to the lives of those boys in gold and black.

Sitting at my keyboard and looking at that picture, I suspect none of these kids had any idea, whatsoever, what life might bring to them. There were smiling faces…somber expressions – some confident…some belying uncertainty…tomorrow as far away as the edges of the universe.

Looking at that picture, I tried, unsuccessfully, to tie a piece of ‘mental string’ to that kid wearing number 54 and connect it to the fellow sitting behind his computer screen.

Wandering into the future, I could never have predicted failure to complete university…a war in Southeast Asia…an unexpected successful return to college…graduate school…decades in a religious community…a meaningful professional career…world travel…. small ‘life around the edges’ experiences with the most interesting of people from professional colleagues to taxi drivers, waitresses, hotel workers, companions on airplane flights – none of it – not one single iota suggested the moment the aperture of that camera clicked and fixed those 12 young players in time.

I suppose one might think looking at these kids preparing to play the games that season, and the game of life rushing at them full tilt, would bring feelings of nostalgia…a sense of context…a wondering of ‘what if’ different choices had been made…different roads taken.

In fact, there is none of that. Other than a familiarity with the faces and names, number 54 is just another image of a kid with a sparkle in his eye.

Next week, I will return to Fairmont, West Virginia, for my 50^th high school reunion and see some of those, by now, not so young fellows frozen in time in the 5^th Street Gymnasium.  We will ‘small talk’ about our lives and try to remember some of the experiences we had when we were bound together by a coach, a junior high school, and ‘uniform’ uniforms.

I hope the conversations about the games of yesterday are few…I hope to find out what they have learned from their journey’s to date…I hope they are still playing the game of life and looking forward to ‘season’ ahead.

- ted