Grade School Daze 01

Author's Note: My apologies  to Readers for getting these the next three Tales out of chronological order. It was a senior moment.

While in bed one night many years ago watching a basketball game on television, I remembered an event that happened in seventh grade that still bothers me if I think about it today. It was in some ways trivial and at the same time deeply wounding. The St. Paul Men’s Club sponsored the seventh and eighth grade boys basketball teams in the Catholic Youth Council (CYC). However, the jock set was only interested in who played on the eighth grade team as the league rules allowed students from both grades to play on that team but restricted the seventh grade team to students in that grade. Which meant the best seventh graders played up.

In seventh grade I tried out for and made the seventh grade squad, and even started at the guard position, to my great personal satisfaction (it was a point I was anxious to prove to my father). But, where it counted the most, with my peers, I was accorded absolutely zero status since the best seventh grade players had already tried out for and made the far more prestigious eighth grade team, which played in a more competitive league. But in an important way that really didn’t bother me since I was happy to have the chance to demonstrate that I was an athlete of some standing, however minor.

Playing on the team was an experience I cherished. It was a lot of fun. Our practices were every Tuesday and Thursday nights and the games were on Saturday mornings. I loved the intense excitement, the competition, the cheering parents, winning. And even losing wasn’t all that bad, because as starting guard I got to play every game.

About two-thirds into the season the two leading players from the seventh grade team were always invited to join the eighth grade squad. Joy of joys, as the second leading scorer I was one of the two players picked. My heart was swollen with pride. The coach told the two of us to come the next Saturday to a scheduled game at St. Mary Magdalene Gym, on South Kingshighway.

That day is crystal clear in my mind. How excited I was. So unsure of myself, not having had a chance of even practicing with my new teammates, yet happy as a lark. I had finally made it to Big Time athletics. And had a good chance at becoming a member of the elite jock corps everyone at school looked up to. Especially the girls. I couldn’t believe my great good fortune. Boy oh boy, I was as excited and proud of myself as a kid could be.

On the way into the locker room everyone was laughing and “horsing around,” as my father would have called it, like the kids we were. As I sat on a bench proudly putting on the new uniform out of the corner of my eye I noticed Tim K. staring intently at me. He was a fellow seventh grader and was someone I would never have counted as a friend. Tim, and his twin brother, Terry, had been on the eighth grade team from the beginning of the year and both were better basketball players than I. Tim, in particular, was a cocky, smart-mouth jock type who I disliked because he was always putting people down in a very public manner. Inflict maximum humiliation must have been his motto.

I glanced over at him and realized he was no longer merely staring but was gaping at me in open-mouthed disbelief, his eyes wide with amazement and shocked incredulity. I ignored him for as long as I could then asked him what his problem was.

He laughed and called out in a loud voice, “Hey guys. Look at this pathetic jerk. He’s got the nerve to come up from the crummy seventh grade team and he’s wearing black tennis shoes and ARGYLE SOCKS!” He yelled the last two words at the top of his lungs.

For the briefest second there was an agonizing, absolute silence as the enormity of my offense spread through the room. As a new member of the team who had been moved up by the coach’s invitation instead of making it on his own ability at the beginning of the season, I was vulnerable to attack. My every weakness was susceptible to exploitation, which had not been long in coming.

The terrible silence was broken by hoots of derision and ridicule that seemed to last forever. I bowed my head and continued tying my tennis shoes as though I was indifferent to the catcalls. But my body betrayed my shame by flushing a bright scarlet. I wanted to die. Hot tears threatened to burst through the cofferdams I made of my eyelids but I fought successfully against them.

For weeks I had begged and pleaded with Mom and Dad to buy me a pair of white tennis shoes and athletic socks like all the other players had. They steadfastly refused, saying there was nothing wrong with my present shoes or socks. They weren’t halfway worn out yet. What do you think we’re made of, they asked, money? Are you so proud you can’t wear what your father worked so hard to buy you? Unfortunately, when I was invited to play for the eighth grade team I was so excited I forgot to renew my pleas.

All I remember of the game is that we won by a respectable margin. We were fairly far ahead by the fourth quarter so I got in for nearly six or seven minutes and scored two baskets. Early Monday morning I slipped the clean uniform through the mail slot in the door of the coach’s room with a note saying I no longer wished to play on the eighth grade team and didn’t want to go back to the seventh grade one either. It was the end of my putative grade school athletic career.

The incident remains a bitter memory. Perhaps I should have stayed and proved that it didn’t matter what my clothes looked like. That the kind of person I was was much more important than what I was wearing. But I knew my parents would never buy the shoes or socks I wanted and Tim K. would not stop his constant taunts and put-downs. I had seen him in action too many times before and didn’t have the inner strength or energy to oppose him. Quitting was the only solution I could see that would allow me to keep what little pride and self-esteem I had.

Throughout my life as a parent, when my children played organized sports or danced in a ballet school I watched vigilantly to make sure that their clothes and equipment were up to date and appropriate. I had learned first hand the unforgiving cruelty of youth and tried to shield them if at all possible from the worst situations.