urEAlITY

I once read somewhere that the happiest people are those who re-invent themselves every 5-7 years. I’m not sure that it’s true, and it was almost certainly said by someone who suffers from the habit, so we have to consider the source when evaluating the comment. Maybe it’s only restless people who re-invent themselves so often, and some restless people are happy, just as some stable people are happy, and so on. Regardless, after reading the comment, I began to look back at my own life.

I once worked in the telecommunications industry, and I clearly remember giving notice right around the five year mark. In an effort to keep me on, my boss offered me a substantial raise as well as a package of additional benefits that basically doubled my salary. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I didn’t. You can probably guess the rest. My desire to leave could only be quieted for so long by the additional money, and after another five years, I again gave my notice.

This time the offer to keep me on was even more substantial, including an equity stake in the company. This time, however, I had the benefit of hindsight and knew that I simply had to leave, so leave I did. It was then that I moved to North Carolina, and soon after that I began teaching.

After five years of teaching I found myself in a bad spot at my school. My principal and I didn’t get along, I was frustrated by the entrenched educational bureaucracy and I was sick of being poor. My 6th year started, but my heart was no longer in it, and soon I began looking for a way out. That was November of 2007, and after a brief an unexpected phone conversation with my dear friend Arthur, I flew to New York to see what opportunities might present themselves.

Arthur had recently entered into a partnership with Tiki Barber to explore business opportunities he might pursue in his post-football career as an entrepreneur and TV personality. On the flight up I read an article about Mo Vaughn’s involvement with affordable housing, and upon arriving in New York I suggested that Tiki might consider doing the same. To my surprise I learned that he already had, partnering with Related Affordable on several ventures.

The following day I also learned that Tiki Barber, former New York Giant, was also Tiki Barber, children’s book author, and that he was having a book signing that day at FAO Schwarz. What happened next was one of those things you can’t really describe, explain, or even understand, but you know you’ll never forget. Sitting in Arthur’s Fifth Avenue office, I found a series of seemingly unconnected pieces of information coalescing in my brain, and before I even knew what I was saying I had given a brief description of a vague idea for a business that Tiki might get involved in. Looking at his watch, Arthur realized that the book signing was going on at that moment. “Let’s go see Tiki,” he said.

Going to see Tiki at a book signing at FAO Schwartz is not really going to see Tiki. It’s going to see Tiki and Ronde from a distance surrounded by fans and kids and security and signing books by the dozen and posing for pictures and so on. I didn’t meet Tiki or speak to Tiki and couldn’t in fact even tell Tiki and Ronde apart. What I did was get called over, admitted behind a barricade and introduced to Tiki’s business manager, at which point Arthur said simply, “You’re on.” So right there in FAO Schwartz I pitched an idea for a business I had just come up with to a man I had just met who manages the affairs of a man I had spent years cheering for when he ran around in blue with a football tucked in his arm. Talk about surreal.

When my pitch, such as it was, ended, I got the standard, “Great idea. Let’s do dinner soon,” that might have been sincere or a polite blow-off, and then we were gone. On the flight back home I couldn’t stop thinking about all the possibilities, and by the time my plane landed I knew my days as a teacher were coming to an end. Maybe it was the chance to do something meaningful, to make a difference and make some money at the same time. Maybe it was the allure of possibly being in business with a celebrity, a man I actually admired. Or maybe it was just the five year itch, but I quit teaching, spent the next month doing research and writing a business plan, and on December 5, 2007, made a formal pitch to Tiki and his business partners. One month later, I moved back to New York to start and run the business.

A year has passed. At times things have been slow enough to make me wonder if I made a mistake, but those slow times have also afforded me the chance to write, which I do enjoy. At other times, like for the past three months, things have been so busy that seventy hour weeks are commonplace, and I barely have the time to eat, much less write. For most of the year, I wasn’t drawing a regular salary, and my credit cards are nearly maxed out, but when you are a passionate person by nature, believe in something, and are willing to see it through, then putting yourself in financial peril to start a business during the worst economic crisis in the past seventy-five years seems like a logical thing to do.

We have now been a business entity for almost twelve months, although we’ve really only been actively doing business for the last six of them. In that time we’ve managed to turn a profit, and at a time when most companies are facing difficulties, we are expanding and hiring new people. Still, for all the good things that have happened, all the momentum we have, and the possibilities for continued growth and success that stand before us, it wasn’t until today that it really hit me. It wasn’t until today that it felt real. Why? Today our web site went live.

It is a function of our digital society that the web is so powerful. In some cases, a business that really isn’t a business at all can use the web to create the illusion of being a business. The other side of that coin is that a business can be doing business, making a profit, having an impact, and somehow it doesn’t quite seem real until you can type in a url and see them “in action.” So it is that today, thanks to the skills of an old friend and former teammate and the hard work of my business partner, we went live. A company founded a year ago based on an idea I had thirteen months ago that has been making money for six months is suddenly real. By now you’re probably fed up with wondering what the hell it is we do. But of course you know how to find out, don’t you?

www.tikirecreation.com

The Way It Was

My elite ultimate career began in earnest under the Queensboro Bridge on the east side of Manhattan at 59th street. It was the summer of 1980. I had just graduated from high school, and my older brother, Brian, grudgingly dragged me along to a combination NY Heifers practice/pick-up game that took place after the softball players were done with the field. Because Brian brought me and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t embarrass him, I played my heart out. I layed out for everything, especially passes he threw me. At one point, someone (maybe Derek Lent) said, “Dude. You made the team. Please stop laying out.” At the time I didn’t even realize I was trying out.

For the sake of historical accuracy, I should probably divulge a few details.

First, the “field” was a patch of clay that sported more than its share of rocks, glass, and random pieces of potentially disfiguring metal. Second, we were poachers, meaning that we had no right to be there. At any time anyone could come up and kick us off or shut down the lights. Still, despite the tenuous nature of the arrangement, dozens of players from all over the city, alerted by word of mouth (this was, after all, long before the internet) came two nights a week to ply their trade on that bleak urban landscape. To this day I can remember watching players from Bronx Science, including Luis Pellecier and Jeremy Seeger, warm up before the game. They were the most talented players I had ever seen.

The game generally ran from 11PM to 1AM, and afterward we would gather at the Blue and Gold Deli on First Avenue, sit on milk crates and drink tall boys of Bud. When the cans of Bud had been drained, Brian and I would return to our upper west side apartment and plan our overthrow of the UPA.

OK, overthrow is a bit of a stretch. All we really planned was to find a way to circumvent the UPA’s regional qualification system and get ourselves to The Show. It was a show that, because we played in the northeast region along with Boston Aerodisc and the Hostages, was all but unattainable. They were just too good. But many of the teams that qualified from other regions were no better than us, and many were considerably worse. So there we sat, on hot summer nights with the AC cranking, in a 16th floor apartment in The Eldorado, on Central Park West between 90th and 91st streets, planning our coup.

“Let’s call ourselves Bayonne,” Brian said. “Bayonne. Not even Bayonne Ultimate. Just Bayonne.” I realized even then that he didn’t want to be from Bayonne so much as he enjoyed saying “Bayonne.” And let’s not forget that this was back in the day when the UPA’s verification system was all but non-existent, so we could pretty much say we were from anywhere on the planet. Saying we were “Bayonne” was not that far-fetched.

Still, while calling ourselves Bayonne would put us in the significantly weaker Mid-Atlantic region, and thereby give us a virtual ticket to Nationals, nobody who lives in New York would ever seriously consider saying he’s from Jersey. It’s just something you don’t do. Confronted with that reality, Brian came up with another idea: “How about New Orleans?”

At that time the South was an ultimate wasteland, and marginally talented teams regularly squared off for the chance to go to the big dance. Saying we were from New Orleans would certainly get us to Nationals, and the only downside would be that a shitty team like the Dallas Sky Pilots wouldn’t get to go to Nationals. No great loss there. But it would mean flying down to Southern Regionals, a tournament that virtually guaranteed us a weekend of eating altogether unpalatable food. As much as getting to the show was an appealing idea, eating that much fried food was more than we could take.

So, in the end, after much discussion and debauchery, we decided that the only legitimate course of action was to earn our way to Nationals. Not through Bayonne or New Orleans, but through the then brutal Northeast region (which was probably much like the NW of today’s club scene). It made no difference that we were in a tougher region. It didn’t matter that we were better than some teams that got to go even though we had to sit at home and read about it in the newsletter. The bottom line was that if we wanted to be in a position to challenge for the title we had to earn that right by slogging our way through the best competition, whether it was at the Regional or National level. Three years later, in 1983, we did so by beating the Hostages. For all the National and World titles I’ve won, there’s something about that second place finish at the 1983 NE Regionals that will never be equaled. Such is the nature of personally ascribed value.

I’ve been reading comments from teams who have been raised on the UPA’s all-inclusive sectional/regional system, and who are uncomfortable with C1’s more selective system. I’m not on a college team and can’t speak to the specific emotions you’re feeling. But I feel confident in suggesting that when players who are dissatisfied stand up and make the powers that be notice good things result. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not for those players who suffer the most initially. But unquestionably in the long run the game, the competition, and the experience are enhanced.

I know what it’s like to be left out of a competition you feel you have earned the right to be a part of. But I can’t help but say that if you were really good enough to win at the highest level you wouldn’t be on the outside looking in. Back in the early 80’s we wanted to go to the show, but the plain truth is we would never have won. Not even on our best day. Windy City had our number. But we kept working, fighting, running, planning, and eventually we beat the shit out of those second-rate Midwestern scumbuckets. Despite the presence of a C1, when you have worked hard enough to earn your chance, you’ll get it. I can only hope that you make the most of it.

Fight The Power

In the summer of 1990, my mother, grandfather, and I decided to take a ferry from Newcastle, England to Bergen, Norway, across the North Sea. At the time it seemed like a nice idea, but that’s only because we had absolutely no clue what a ferry crossing on the North Sea would be like. After 24 hours of feeling sick, wanting to vomit, hoping to die, and thinking seriously of throwing myself off the deck into the water, I know far too well what a ferry crossing on the North Sea is like. If you can glean no other piece of wisdom from reading my blog, know this: fly to Norway.

The upside of our maritime misery was that we landed in Bergen, a lovely port city surrounded by mountains. From there we took a train over the mountains to Oslo. The train ride through the mountains was as spectacular as the ferry ride was horrible. The train itself was somewhat antiquated, but in an appealing, old-timey way. The seats were covered in a maroon fabric that at one time was probably plush but had been worn from use, and the brass fixtures were tarnished and dinged, but when it came time for a snack you did not walk to the snack car. Instead, an elderly man in a starched white jacket served us cucumber sandwiches and beer from a cart that he rolled through the aisle. Whichever side of the train you looked out showed breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains and their many lakes. It was a memorable trip, and though I’m sure the trains are now modern, sleek and fast, I’m rather pleased I got to experience some of the old world splendor while it lasted.

The occasion of our visit to Norway was the 1990 WFDF World Championships in Oslo, a tournament we qualified for by beating Tsunami in the 1989 UPA Nationals. At that game, as twilight fell and temperatures dropped, my grandfather took a seat on a cold aluminum bench on our sideline. Soon after he sat down, we began our second half comeback. Thinking that perhaps sitting on that bench had started our comeback, he refused to move, even as twilight became darkness and the temperatures continued to fall. After our victory, it took some time for us to straighten him out for the walk to the car.

There were no such problems at Worlds. The weather was warm and we rolled through the pool play games with ease, crushing the Swedes, who we felt had it coming after 1988, 17-4. But the tournament was not without challenges. Playing in July in Norway, “The Land of the Midnight Sun,” we had our first experience with trying to sleep in a country where it never gets dark. We finally got the hang of it by taping black plastic garbage bags over our hotel room windows. What we never did figure out was how you know it’s time to end the waffle ball game and go home when the sun stays out all the time.

The tournament continued, and a win in the semi-finals over what might have been Finland earned us a rematch with Sweden in the finals. It also earned us a bit of controversy.

The tournament program showed the finals had been scheduled in a local stadium, something that was hardly unusual for a world championship. What was unusual was that the stadium field was artificial turf, and we weren’t told until after the semi-finals. We couldn’t believe it. How could they even think of playing a final on turf? While it’s true that some teams, particularly in winter, play on artificial turf at times (usually for practice), we never did. We also played hard, layed out often, and expected to do the same during the World Championship Final. The thought of playing on turf was very unsettling to say the least. The fact that they had not told anyone on our team of their plans beforehand was even more so.

The tournament organizers were very re-assuring. They told us the field was in good shape, Europeans often played on artificial turf, and there was no reason to anticipate any injuries or problems. We were also told that it was in the best interests of the tournament organizers, the other eliminated teams who wanted to watch, and the many fans in attendance that we play in a stadium rather than on one of the pool play fields, our only other option. Despite the logical, well-made argument that it was in everybody else’s best interest for us to do something that made us uncomfortable, we, as a group, decided to do what was in our best interest. We refused to play. Told we could lose the game on a forfeit, we still refused. Our health and safety were more important to us, we reasoned, than their trophy.

In the end WFDF blinked, and the finals were played on a grass field. We beat Sweden, winning our second of five WFDF and WUCC titles. More importantly, we stood up for what we thought was right, resisted the pressure of an organization that tried to bend us to their will rather than look out for our interests, and refused to heed the argument that the interests of all the people not playing the game were more important than those of the players. If any of you young players out there find yourselves in a similar situation, perhaps you can learn from our example. How will you find yourselves in such a situation?

Let’s just say you’ll know one when you see one.

My Hall of Fame Induction

One of my favorite lessons from my days as a teacher was one I called Verbal Hierarchy. The purpose is to illustrate to linguistically challenged (and largely disinterested) students that there’s a better way to communicate degrees of feeling than by simply adding really (as in “I’m really mad.”) to a sentence. It’s also a good way to show just how remarkably rich our language is, and how important proper word choice is to clear and effective communication.

Take an adjective that describes a feeling and write it on the board. A good one to start with is angry. Then ask for a synonym for angry and have the class determine whether that synonym describes a feeling that is stronger or weaker than angry. If stronger, write it above angry. If weaker, write it below. Repeat and continue, for as long as you can. Before you know it, teenagers who generally say things like “I wasn’t just mad. I was really, really, REALLY mad” are vociferously debating the proper placement of furious, livid and irate in the hierarchy of anger. Is miffed more or less than ticked, or irked, or peeved? Does anything trump apoplectic?

The exercise works best with adjectives, but nouns can be fun, too.

Some time ago, Alex DeFrondeville pointed out in response to an RSD query that I was not yet old enough for Hall of Fame induction (which was true at the time), but that once I was I would surely be a unanimous first ballot entry. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that once again Alex was wrong. More recently, Jim Parinella stated that it was an “embarrassment” that I was not inducted in my first year of eligibility. If that is true, what can he say about what happened in my second year of eligibility? Is it more or less than an embarrassment? Is it a travesty? A mockery? A sham? An indignation?

See what I mean? Isn’t that fun?

But enough of that. The truth is I’m tired of waiting by the phone, crying my eyes out night after night, hoping against hope for my Sally Field moment. It’s pretty clear now that if you didn’t play in Boston, California, or at Glassboro, the UPA doesn’t want you. While it’s true that I’m annoyed, abraded, vexed that in addition to myself, this year’s uninvited from the Sl8 include Pat King, Peg Hollinger, and CVH, at least I can be elated, buoyed, euphoric that John Schemechel made it.

So I’m taking matters into my own hands, and starting my own Hall of Fame. One thing I can tell you: not in this year’s class, nor in any other class, will you find a Frisbee. With all due respect to the powers that be (this is one of those times when a person uses with all due respect even though no respect is due) putting a piece of plastic in the Hall of Fame is just stupid. Why? Try reading Susan Casey’s essay on the ills of plastic pollution in our oceans and bodies in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 for an answer. I wonder how many red 80 molds are part of some enormous raft of plastic waste floating in the world’s oceans.

So, without further ado I give you The 2008 Inaugural Class of My Hall of Fame:

Pat King: No brainer. I mean, there are some guys who’ll tell you they belong in the hall when all they ever do is cut bowling alley, go deep, throw ten yard passes, and write tedious tomes filled with obvious observations. All Pat did was dominate ever facet of the game, write clever cheers (anybody else out there use the word souse without referring to alcohol?), and inspire the greatest team of all time to reach the pinnacle of the sport. Not to mention complete the first greatest in a National Championship Final, and thereby create an indelible image that is nothing short of iconic. I mean, if Ultimate ever wanted the perfect postage stamp, that’s it.

Team Mom: That’s right, my mom. If you don’t know, you better acks somebody.
(Maybe the only member of my hall who’s a shoo-in to get in the other one – Moonee ate an awful lot of PB&J sandwiches.)

Windy City: Yes, the entire team. 1983 National Finals was played during a monsoon, and all those guys did was throw and catch ridiculous blades all over the field on their way to the title. 1986 they simply rolled over us, a relentless machine. From synchronized breathing before the pull, to 1-2-Fuck You, to R, to Check, these guys were clever and good. They dominated their opponents, and forced you to toughen up, quit whining, and bust your ass if you were ever going to beat them. That or go crying to your typewriter to pen a self-righteous letter to the UPA about “uglimate.” Gracious in victory and defeat, these guys were the shit.

Johnny Sky: Condor from the early 80s who gets in on the nickname alone.

Peg Hollinger: Smart, good, tough, hard-ass, bitch of an ultimate player. Also one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet. As we say in the south, Masher done good.

Andy Borinstein: Could be the most annoying pain in the ass ever, but he knew the game, its strategies, and was getting inside people’s heads and moving all their shit around long before Gewirtz and with more subtlety and style. Not blessed with much natural athleticism, but still an effective player at the elite level, and an excellent judge of young talent.

Brian Dobyns: Has coached in Open College, Women’s College, Open Women’s and High School divisions. Has started more teams than most people can name. One of the greatest throwers ever, but an even better teacher of throwing. Would have as many titles as anybody out there if that were what he wanted. Started the New York City Summer Ultimate League back in 1982, and even had the vision of a Club League for elite teams in 1980, long before most teams even thought about traveling outside their region to play.

Molly Goodwin: No explanation necessary.

Cribber: Could get in on the nickname and yes, could jump out of the building and throw the craziest blades on the planet. But he gets in because he once stood on the field at Nationals and said, “I wish all the weed I’ve ever smoked was in a big pile right here now.”

Peter “Smoke” Diamandis: Played when games were still timed. Playing with Kaboom! leading the then National Champion Windy City on the first day of Easterns. He has the disc in his hands when the time remaining in the game is less than the stall count. His defender says, “No need to throw. You guys win 10-7,” and reaches out to shake his hand. Smoke throws the flick for a score, looks the guy in the eyes and says, “Eleven.”

Heidi Pomfret: Find my RSD write-up from the first Bullseye squad at Potlach. A gem in every sense of the word, and tough as nails, on the field and off.

Pablo: Once skyed the whole NYNY team while eating a salami and provolone hero.

Skip Kuhn: Fast, tireless, and not a little bit crazy. Once fouled a guy by clipping his heels on a cut, and responded to the foul call by saying, “Maybe I wouldn’t foul you if you ran faster.”

Marty Stazak: Everybody who has ever played has one player who gave them fits as a defender. That guy for me is Marty Stazak from Tsunami. The real deal.

Leslie “Lester” Charles: Probably a no explanation necessary, but what the heck? She is still so ultra-competitive it’s crazy. Recently up in Massachusetts I was too tired (or drunk?) to come through on a promised game of Frisbee golf. She made it clear she was going to kick my ass if I didn’t go out there so she could beat my ass. I did. So did she.

Jean Francois Bullet: French National Ultimate Champion. Won 11 Championships in 11 years. Retired to North County, San Diego to surf and ponder the meaninglessness of existence and the significance of the experience.

Poppy: Yes, my dog. The best dog ever.

Bill Rodriguez: Played for years at the elite level and won a gazillion championships without ever learning how to throw. Forever justifies Joe Durso’s assessment of ultimate as a “limited skillset sport.”

Tully Beatty: Jackie Beatty – Need I say more?

Idol Musings

Last weekend it was reported that Barack Obama set a new standard by raising an astonishing $150 million in a single month, September. By contrast, John McCain, who stuck by his pledge to have his campaign funded publicly, is limited to a total of $84 million from convention to election (and probably wouldn’t have been able to raise more had he opted to go private). The implications of this financial disparity are, at the least, troubling.

Obama has been using the majority of his riches to buy television advertising in swing states, and even in some states that are not generally thought to be “swing.” In one of those new-found swing states, North Carolina, Obama commercials outnumber McCain commercials 8 to 1. As a former resident of that state, I know that many North Carolinians don’t read; they get all their information from the television. McCain’s last minute efforts, hampered by limited funds, have been supplemented by the pedestrian (though affordable) tool of automated phone calls. It doesn’t take a political pundit to know if the average Joe is more likely to hang up a phone or turn off a TV. If Obama wins in North Carolina, there will be reason to wonder if it isn’t because the average person, hearing one message eight times and the opposite message once, simply came to believe the message heard more often. Regardless of which candidate you favor the idea of people’s votes being bought, either through direct payment or media blitz, should be unsettling.

At the same time Obama’s fundraising record was being reported, a smaller item described the changing patterns of campaign contributions made by big pharmaceutical companies. Pharma has historically contributed to both parties, but more heavily to Republicans. Recently, perhaps sensing the shifting tides of democracy, that pattern has been reversed.

As we contemplate the possibility of a historical outcome to a campaign built on the promise of change, we should also be mindful of the corruptive power of money, and the sobering reality that in a system so predicated on money, the one thing you probably can’t buy is change.

On a broader scale, given the current economic times, the excesses of the campaign as a whole are disturbing. Today’s New York Times reports that the total cost of this election campaign will top $5 billion. And that only goes to Election Day. Who can fathom the price tag of the inauguration? If it ends being put on by the same people who brought us the political convention as grandiose, opulent Roman spectacle, you can bet it will add handsomely to the already bloated price tag of this exercise in modern American democracy.

The Bailout

Forgive me for saying this, but thank the Lord for the bailout. Finally, after two interminable years, something has pushed the election to the backburner. Just in time, too. I was beginning to run short of incredulity, cynicism, and contempt. But rather than get into any sort of substantive discussion of the bailout, let’s take a moment to examine the term itself.

Depending on your reference, the origins of the term can go back as far as the 14th century. Spellings vary depending on what side of the pond you hail from, but the meanings are similar. Originally derived from the French word for bucket, to bail out (or bale out) is to ladle water, as from a boat. Later meanings include buying a person’s liberty from incarceration, and leaping from an airplane (ideally with a parachute, itself seemingly the bale). According to Webster, it’s not until the 1950s that the term, now consolidated into a single word, is used to describe a financial rescue.

My motivation behind a close examination of the term, besides my desire to establish myself as a would be William Safire, derives from my basic discomfort with its use in the current context.

In my previous life as a teacher, I spent many hours explaining the difference between denotative and connotative definitions. Briefly, a word’s denotative meaning is its actual, dictionary definition. Its connotative meaning encompasses all the subtleties of use, interpretation and, perhaps most importantly in our current political and social climate, spin. As I explained it to my students, in a world where fewer and fewer people actually know the denotative meanings of many of the words they use on a regular basis, the connotative meanings take on added significance. ( By way of example, consider the word ignorant, which denotatively means without knowledge, but whose connotation is so negative as to make the word an insult.)

In the early days of the current economic downturn, there was much discussion, and an equal amount of hand wringing, over whether or not we were actually in a recession. Pundits pontificated on both sides of the debate, and we were treated to a parade of alternate terms that were not quite so depressing: correction, downturn, slowdown, and of course, stagflation. Finally, realizing the time had come for him to face our financial flaccidity head on, our illustrious leader, in a valiant effort to stiffen our economic resolve, proposed a stimulus package. Just listen to it: stimulus. It evokes feelings of activity, stimulation, even virility. It is unquestionably a positive term, and I’m sure the presidential spin doctors had every hope that the positive connotations alone would be the cure for our economic impotence. Sadly it was not to be.

Interestingly enough, like someone who had “never had this happen before,” he kept waiting for the stimulus to work, seemingly saying, “just give it a minute – it’ll come back.” Of course, as we all know, it only got worse (not that I’ve ever had that happen before). Which brings us to our current predicament.

Yes, times are tough, tougher than most anyone alive can remember. Yet with all of Congress, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve on the case, I felt sure somebody would come up with something. Not a solution (because you can’t really solve a problem you don’t understand) but at the very least a proposal, a platform, a word whose connotation would be at least as inspiring as the stimulus. I thought long and hard on our current deficiencies and assumed that at the very least we would be in line for an enhancement. Perhaps, given the dire nature of things, the do or die situation we find ourselves in, it might be serious enough for Paulson to call for an augmentation. But no, faced with the specter of a calamitous collapse, when what he needed to do was choose a word whose connotation would inspire confidence and determination, Paulson gave us the bailout.

Just listen to it: bailout. Not exactly inspirational, is it? No matter which meaning you choose, we’re fucked.

We’re in jail. We’re facing the gallows or worse. Our bail is a paltry 700 billion. But check it out. Lucky US. Our doddering old Uncle Sam comes along to bail us out. But we still have to face the charges, or go on the lam and lose the bail money.

We’re in a plane. The pilots are dead. We’re on autopilot and running out of fuel. We’re going down. Nothing to do but bail out. But even if the chute opens and even if we don’t land in a tree or in shark-infested waters or in a fucking volcano we’re still in the middle of nowhere without a way home.

Finally, the one that I truly think is the most apropos: we’re in a boat in the middle of the ocean. We’re taking on water. There’s only one certainty and it’s that we’re going to sink. What to do? Let’s start bailing out, not because it will save us, but because it beats sitting here doing nothing, and at least gives the illusion of taking meaningful action.

So there you have it, and it ain’t pretty. We’re in a world of hurt, that sound you hear is shit hitting the fan, and the best all the assembled minds of our elected and appointed representatives can come up with is to try to save the sinking ship with a bucket. We’re going down and all we’ve got going for us is the bailout. It’s the financial equivalent of an ultimate team naming itself after an ocean liner that sank in the worst maritime disaster in history.

And we all know how that story ended.

I'm Not Drunk

Early on in the frenzied reaction to my recent blog post about a person we’ve been calling Tim, I received a phone call from my brother. It might be hard for anyone who does not know me very well to know how much pleasure it gives me to write that simple line. My brother and I have not always been close. There were long stretches of time when our relationship was one of benign neglect, when we might have gone years without seeing each other if not for the regular recurrence of Christmas. I’m pleased to say that we’re probably closer now than we ever have been, and I’m always delighted when he calls. However, on this recent occasion I was also very busy and a bit distracted, which might explain why I can’t quite remember the exact wording of the wisdom he offered by way of commentary on the recent blog post about Tim. It went something like this: People should just get drunk, fall down, and start vomiting.

His point might have been that Tim, by engaging in conversation during that delicate period between drunk and falling down, had brought this on himself. In other words, once you’ve reached a certain level of drunkenness, the things you’re liable to say might be even more embarrassing than lying in a pool of your own vomit. Without revealing too much about the revelry that followed North Carolina State’s upset of Black Tide at College Nationals in Boulder (1999?), my brother knows whereof he speaks. Perhaps if he had been at the Clambake party last weekend he might have been talking to Tim and he could have counseled him. He was not. I was. I did not counsel. I listened, and then I blogged.

As previously mentioned, my post has generated a frenzied reaction, with three times as many visits in a day as I had ever recorded before. Comments to the post currently stand at fourteen, and an RSD thread, spun off by a reader with his own agenda, has had eighteen posts and seven thread title changes as of this writing. As is often the case, much of the reaction doesn’t merit mention. A few responses, however, were both thoughtful and thought-provoking, and it seems that perhaps some amplification of my position is in order.

I have no vendetta against Tim, and I don’t think it was inappropriate for me to blog using the information he revealed while drunk at a Frisbee party. I don’t know if he feels differently, but he has been in touch with me via email and did not indicate that he felt that I had crossed the line. I know that some people disagree on this point, so I think we’ll have to assume that our lines aren’t in the same place and leave it at that.

There were other things Tim said that I will not reveal, including his assessment of the HOF credentials of both the current Sl8 of candidates and his former teammates. To my way of thinking that would be inappropriate, the difference being that I think it’s perfectly acceptable to reveal (and perhaps revel in) Tim’s views on himself but not his views on others. As for why and how I revealed what I revealed, that question requires a more elaborate answer. Let’s start with how.

First of all, I make no claim to being an Oscar Wilde scholar, and if my thematic interpretation of The Picture of Dorian Gray is flawed, you have my apologies. It was really just a device to introduce the possibility that Tim’s revelations were more than drunken blather.

Likewise, the recitation of the falls from grace suffered by Fossella, Edwards, and Spitzer (now that would be a kick-ass law firm) was also a device, one I thought would suggest the likelihood that while there are certainly varying degrees of duplicity, it could be a more common part of the human condition than we might want to admit. I hope that you’ll note that in the politically charged environment we find ourselves in today, I made certain to include members of both major political parties.

As for the transition from device-laden intro to the actual meat of the matter, let’s just say that when Match wrote that I could have done a better job he was probably being kind. I’ve written smoother transitions with a sledgehammer.

Most of my writing is done in my head, with ideas weaving, unraveling and re-weaving themselves over a period of time until the piece feels ready. When I finally sit down to the actual task of writing, the piece is usually about 90% completed. That process doesn’t work well when time is of the essence, and because I wanted to get this quasi-Clambake piece posted soon after the event, I sat right down and wrote it. I’ll be the first to admit that it reeks of mediocrity.

I have written some pieces that I found to be well-crafted and genuinely moving, touching on topics that, while personal in the specific sense, could be seen to have almost universal application in a more general sense. Many of those pieces have been read by fewer than one quarter of the people who read this recent piece in a single day. Am I to assume that, among the ultimate blog reading community, flawed writing of a gossipy nature with dubious value is four times more popular than more cleverly crafted, poignant tales touching on serious issues? I don’t know. More importantly, I don’t care.

I write because I like to. Sometimes I write about life’s little absurdities, and I write in a way that amuses me, that makes me smile. Sometimes I write about more serious topics, and I’m not ashamed to say that sometimes my writing makes me cry. If I write about ultimate I try to do it tangentially. I’m not always successful. I do not write in a vacuum. I post my writing on a blog and I write for an audience, but it may not be the audience you imagine. In most of my posts there are little jokes that can only be understood by small numbers of people, sometimes only one. Most of the time I never know if those jokes find their mark, but I keep writing them. Every once in a while I get an email from someone who has been moved by something I’ve written. That’s the audience I write for.

I have nothing against Tim, but I was making fun of him. Anyone who reads my stuff knows I make as much fun of myself as anyone else. We should all spend a little more time laughing at ourselves. On that note, and to put to rest any suggestion of my lawn being decorated with heads on spikes, I think the Cheap Seats bit is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. In fact, for some time afterward, I changed all my passwords to FRIZBAY! So, in the spirit of self-deprecation, and in fairness to Tim, I’ll share some of the things I might have said that night at the Clambake party.

As a member of the HOF peer review committee, I had a chance to cast ten nominating votes from a selection of eligible candidates. I could only find three people to vote for. Two of those players are on the Sl8. I think that only three members of New York deserve to be in the HOF. I do not believe I was ever the greatest player in the game; I wasn’t even the greatest player on my team.

I am not drunk.

The Picture of (Your Name Here)

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s only published novel, the title character is granted his wish for immortality. Despite the passing years, he does not show any physical signs of aging. Meanwhile, his portrait, which he keeps hidden, ages and becomes increasingly disfigured. But while Dorian Gray does not show physical signs of age, his internal disfigurement becomes increasingly problematic, as he secretly engages in worsening acts of lewdness and depravity. After many years of hidden debauchery, he attacks the now hideous portrait, but succeeds only in turning himself instantly into a withered and unrecognizable corpse, while the portrait returns to its original condition.

The novel’s examination of the question of immoral behavior and its impact on the soul captivated readers, and subsequent film versions of the story have done the same for movie buffs. There is even a condition known as Dorian Gary Syndrome, an excessive preoccupation with one’s physical appearance coupled with a fear of or unwillingness to accept aging. In light of recent developments in the political arena, I think the more compelling theme, in terms of applicability to the world as we know it, is the allure of duplicity, the thrill of leading double lives.

An item in today’s New York Post notes that the leading republican candidate for the congressional seat currently held by Vito Fossella is about to receive a judicial appointment. That appointment, should it come through and be accepted, would open up the door for Fossella to run for re-election, something he vowed not to do back in May. The reason he vowed not to run? After being arrested for DUI he subsequently admitted to having an extra-marital affair and fathering a three-year-old child out of wedlock. As for why Mr. Fossella wouldn’t think that having led a double life is an impediment to re-election to Congress, consider Senator John Edwards.

In early August, squeaky-clean John Edwards finally admitted the truth of rumors that had been swirling around his campaign for months. Namely, that while campaigning for the highest office in the land with his devoted, cancer-stricken wife at his side he had been carrying on an affair with a campaign videographer. Although he denies being the father of her new-born baby, there is at least some reason to doubt his sincerity. So why would anyone with such an unblemished image and reputation risk it all for such tawdry goings on? Perhaps we should ask Elliot Spitzer.

New York Governor Elliot Spitzer (aka Client #9) fell farther faster than either Fossella or Edwards, going from the Governor’s mansion to the political outhouse (and his wife’s doghouse) in a matter of days when details of his indiscretions became public knowledge. Yet his sin, hiring a prostitute, may have been the least distressing. (We don’t call the world’s oldest profession for nothing.) What made Spitzer’s fall worse was the fact that he had made his career as the crime-busting, take no prisoners, prosecutor of just these kinds of transgressions. When word got around that the holier than thou crusader was paying $5,000 a night to sleep with a woman only five years older than his eldest daughter, what he received was more than come-uppance. It was up, over, out and goodbye.

Three highly regarded public servants with everything to lose risk it all to experience the thrill of duplicity, and all of them within a period of six months. Three modern day Dorian Grays, composed, respected, and admired on the outside, while their secret sins eat away at their souls. Three people who were one thing on the outside, and something very different on the inside. If we can assume that for every one caught there are plenty more who get away with it, this is truly just the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, if we see it in public figures we can readily assume that many average citizens, regular folk if you will, who would never be subject to the scrutiny that brought these scandals to light are probably living similarly duplicitous lives.

So there I was at the Clambake party, a Frisbee party that, with its food, drink, games, bands, diversions and indiscretions, is about as impressive a Frisbee party as there is. It is, however, still a Frisbee party, which is why I was looking to get a ride out of there even as I was swallowing my last bite of lobster. Unfortunately, before I was able to secure that ride and get the hell out of Dodge, I found myself in the company of someone whose name I’ve omitted for his own protection.

Now this person, we’ll call him Tim, is a very recognizable figure in our little game. He has made a name for himself as a very successful player, committed organizer, and even authored an expansive collection of strategies. Along the way he has come to be known as polite, intelligent, soft-spoken, and perhaps even a little bit bland, or so I thought. At a Clambake party, that celebrated 20 years of the event with a theme that harkened back even farther, Tim revealed another side of himself, a side that, a la Dorian Gray, he may have been hiding for some time.

Because this guy, the one we’re calling Tim, has some very detailed knowledge of the Hall of Fame selection process, our conversation began there. We started with the usual innocuous comments and insincere pleasantries, but then things turned quickly. For starters, Tim readily revealed the names of the eight finalists for this year’s Hall of Fame ballot, information that, to my knowledge, is not supposed to be discussed so cavalierly. He then offered his opinions on who should and should not be inducted, again a matter of some sensitivity. Finally, in a boast that might’ve come out of Joe Durso, he declared that he should be a first ballot entry into the Hall of Fame because he was, for period of years, the best player in the game, uncoverable, won six titles in a row, AND he wrote a book. I’m not making this up. In case there were any doubt about how he really felt, when given the opportunity to soften his boast, Tim declined, instead repeating it. Twice.

And I thought I was full of myself.

Having finally secured my much desired ride, I left the party wondering which Tim is the real Tim. Is it the guy I’ve known for years, the quiet, sometimes awkward, intelligent and soft-spoken Tim. Or is it the bombastic, presumptuous, self-inflating egomaniac who holds so many of his peers in contempt?

The following day, Clambake Sunday, I arrived for our quarterfinal game still a little undone from the previous night’s encounter, and was approached by a teammate who asked ,”Did you hear about Tim?” He proceeded to tell me a story that was soon corroborated by several others. As the night wore on and the party continued, Tim had gotten so drunk that he fell on his head, not once but twice. Soon reports started rolling in that he was on his team’s sideline vomiting.

Was everything Tim said just drunken rambling? Or did the alcohol, whose effects were less obvious when we spoke than when he walked, acting like a truth serum, bringing his real, honest, heartfelt feelings out in the open? Had he been living a double life all these years, pretending to be one thing but knowing he was another, and did that duplicity and its attendant tension finally push him to do something so outlandish he would never be able to go back to old Tim? Is that what happened to Fossella, Edwards and Spitzer? If so, if it can happen to them and Tim, who’s next?

Toad, Dusty, Ray, and the Grammar Police

It has been widely recognized that the New York roster had a remarkable blend of talent and intelligence. What is perhaps less widely known is the intelligence extended well beyond the ultimate field into the minutiae of the English language and its usage. Several members of the team routinely engaged in discussions of proper grammar, as well as parsing the sometimes subtle distinctions among fact, opinion, conjecture, and supposition. One might suggest that had we not been beating teams so handily and therefore had so much time to kill we would never have expended such mental energy on such idle matters. I like to think that even if our games were more hotly contested, we would still have found the time to engage in what was, for us, more than an idle pursuit. Regardless, those of us who were so inclined did discuss such things, even during timeouts, much to the consternation of our less linguistically inclined teammates, a practice which collectively earned us the moniker, the Grammar Police.

I admit with no small degree of embarrassment that we were only volunteer policemen, ersatz grammarians, proudly strutting about in uniform and badge but lacking both the firepower and the training to qualify as official enforcers of the laws of the language. You can be fairly certain that we didn’t even always understand the laws we were attempting to enforce. Nonetheless, like other volunteers the world over, our hearts were in the right place, even if the same could not always be said of our modifiers.

The years passed, our greatness waned, but my love of the language and its many arcane rules did not fade in the least. When a life-altering experience led me to switch careers, I put my volunteer’s uniform in storage and enrolled in the Police Academy. A short time later, I graduated with honors, a full-fledged, Harcourt-Harbrace Handbook trained, sentence diagramming member of the National Order of Grammar Police.

In the movie Training Day, relative rookie Ethan Hawke is acquainted with the hard reality of what real policing is like by veteran Denzel Washington, and it is in no way what he might have expected from reading the manuals at the Academy. The same can be said of my first assignment in the precinct that includes West Johnston High School.

For starters, I soon learned that my partner, who has a master’s degree in journalism from an institution of “higher” learning I won’t name (Kansas State), couldn’t identify a preposition in a sentence. Later that year, when a dispute with my captain landed me in her doghouse, that partner was given my Honors English I beat. The following year, the Chief of the Department caused us to lose the county-wide, departmental spelling competition when she misfired on “connoisseur,” insisting despite my protestations that it only contained a single s.

As the years wore on, my insistence on doing things by the book isolated me from the rest of my fellow officers. On my beat, students were not allowed to get by using the wrong case, make do with sloppy spelling or punctuation, or muddle through with flawed subject/verb agreement. My colleagues, thinking I was trying to make them look bad, resented my adherence to the letter of the law. When my methods were successful, when crimes against the language dropped on my beat, they attributed it to the caliber of my students rather than to my practice of stringent enforcement of the grammarian’s code. I suppose things hit rock bottom when it became known throughout the department that it was standard practice on my beat to have my students mine the school newspaper for errors as part of their weekly assignments. I became an outcast, no longer even called by my first name, but referred to only as “Dobyns,” most often in the context of, “Don’t you hate Dobyns?”

Looking back, I’ve often wondered if I might, just possibly, have gone too far. I mean, I wasn’t just a member of the Grammar Police. I was Grammar Supercop, and I really can’t blame my fellow officers for finding me unbearable. Strict, unabashed, and unwavering adherence to the rules, even rules as sacrosanct as those of English grammar and spelling, can be a little tedious, even when it’s well-meant. Perhaps I should have loosened the reins a little, looked the other way on occasion, let some of the less serious violations slide. After all, everyone else was doing it. I guess it was something about the uniform that made it hard for me loosen up. But now that I’m no longer a member of the force…

Which brings me to Toad -- passionate, linguistically challenged Toad. Yes, his posts, comments to my blog, and probably his grocery lists are rife with spelling errors, but looking through the prism of my former grammar zealotry, so what? Does it really matter? Most of the time I know what he meant to write, and even when I’m a little confused, I can usually gather from context which of the possible meanings he was shooting for. In fact, it’s been shown through an oft-repeated study (that I think originated at Cambridge) that when it comes to matters of comprehension correct spelling is over-rated. Factors like word shape, initial and terminal letter accuracy, and context have more impact on comprehension than accurate spelling. And since the goal of all language use is communication, who cares if he can spell, so long as I can understand him?

Which brings me to Dusty, whose carefully written elucidation of his previous comment seems, for the moment at least, to have adequately quelled Luke’s desire to smash his face in with a baseball bat (Ichiro model, I’m sure). Although Dusty clearly possesses linguistic skills to spare and spelled every word in his initial comment correctly, he fell a tad short on the communication front. I will openly admit that I was totally lost, and on reading Luke’s response I went back and re-read Dusty’s comment, simply because I had missed both the slight of teachers and the general doucheyness that Luke had detected. On a second read I still didn’t understand, but does that mean that if I needed a second read of a manuscript I was submitting I’d send it to Toad before I sent it to Dusty? Not bloody likely.

Which brings me to Ray, who used his comment on my blog to take a swipe at Toad’s spelling before he got around to the really important issue, me. For the record, I have no problem with personal attacks, misdirected aggression, off-topic diatribes, or anything else someone might post under the guise of “comment.” It all qualifies under my liberal definition of discourse; bring it on. But Ray’s related post to Toad’s rsd thread, mired amid the drivel, raises an important point that bears repeating lest it be lost: sometimes what you write isn’t the only thing we’re reading.

Readers have active minds, and even as we’re processing the content, deciphering its meaning, making associations to stored knowledge, and wondering if the person in the next cubicle is going to see us scratch ourselves, we’re making assumptions about the writer. Hence, Toad is ignorant, Dusty is a douche, and Luke has some anger management issues. Any or all of these might have some merit, but none of them was explicitly stated; they were all inferred by readers who were, either consciously or subconsciously, filling in the blanks between the lines.

So, without taking sides, I think Toad should consider the constructive part of Ray’s criticism as just that. There are people who will be more likely to give his candidacy for the UPA board support, or at least consideration, if he takes the time to carefully construct his position statements, and then takes a little more time to proofread them. I might also suggest that, in addition to being a valuable exercise in self-improvement, using proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation in written communication might come in handy should the day ever come when Hurricane Francis bears down on the Carolina coast and wipes out his millions. A poorly written cover letter or flawed resume is often the first thing that gets a job seeker disqualified, even if he did once have more money than the person doing the hiring.

I think Dusty might have learned a thing or two about communication from this discussion as well. His recent comment was a joy to read, and was a beautiful illustration of something that is often forgotten. Good writing is hard, but the effort is worth it, because it has always been true that the harder you work at your writing the easier your words are to read. Well done.

To Ray I say that although I have appreciation for the point I think you were trying to make, I detected a note of condescension in your writing that probably made it hard for Toad to accept your criticism, however well-meaning it might have been. I am not, however, suggesting you change your style; I’m a former member of the Grammar Police, not the Tone Patrol.

Finally, in case you were wondering what happens when veterans of the force lose their edge, when their previously way honed skills become dull from disuse, consider this:

On a recent weeknight, a couple of friends/former teammates from the great World Champion Red Tide ’98 team were in town, and we found ourselves in Union Hall, a favorite Park Slope hangout. In addition to having indoor bocce ball every night, Union Hall has an occasional grammar and spelling competition. We were cajoled into entering by the jovial emcee, and made our way downstairs looking forward to what we assumed would be a very relaxed event where we would all be reminded, in the nicest way possible, how stupid we are. Instead we experienced an excruciating evening of humiliation at the hands of the formerly jovial emcee who turned quickly into a Grammar Nazi, and were also reminded, in a not especially nice way, how stupid we are.

Through a series of spelling questions (caipirinha, Worcestershire, radicchio) and grammar questions (transitive/intransitive verbs, restrictive/non-restrictive clauses, subjective/nominative cases, past perfect progressive tense) the pool of contestants was whittled down to the final 5. Those five were then brought up on stage where, prior to answering all subsequent questions, they were required to do a shot. That’s when things got really ugly.

For the record, I finished third, eliminating myself after several rounds of shots by misidentifying a verbal and misspelling crustacean, a word that is significantly easier to spell before you do a pineapple upside down cake shot.

Nothing Means Anything

On September 11, 2001, I was in a classroom in Poe Hall on the North Carolina State University campus, watching the events unfold on a small television that was rolled in on an A/V cart. As the day wore on, I continued watching in the Caldwell Hall Lounge, and in another classroom in Tompkins Hall. Less than three years removed from the city and with many dear friends in harm’s way, I felt maddeningly distant and utterly impotent. In time I would learn that people watching from rooftops around the five boroughs had remarkably similar feelings, despite their proximity. There was nothing anyone could do but watch.

I was lucky. All my friends escaped physical harm. My friend Arthur was not so lucky. He lost a childhood friend, a friend he called a brother as an expression of their closeness. For him, and for many others like him, life is divided now neatly into two parts: before 9/11 and after 9/11. Their lives will never be the same.

Yesterday was my first September 11th since I returned to New York, and it was therefore my first chance to spend the day with Arthur. It didn’t quite work out the way I planned, for a variety of reasons. The first was work.

Arthur doesn’t work on September 11th, and if I had to hazard a guess I’d say that he never will. I, however, as a partner and managing director of a start-up that is trying to grow, do not yet have the luxury of saying there are any days that I don’t work. So while Arthur spent the day in Bay Ridge, taking his son to visit with the family of his “brother” and attending various memorial services, I took the R train to my Manhattan office.

I’m not sure precisely what I expected working in New York on September 11th would be like, but this wasn’t it. For starters, the New York Times did not have a single mention of the event on the front page. Nothing. The Metro section had a story about the altered skyline, but that was it. Somehow I thought the event, the date, the remembrance would be a more substantial story.

My first meeting of the day was with a woman who moved here two years ago from Brazil, and she was frank in her assessment of the seventh anniversary of the attacks. “Get over it already,” she implored with an insensitivity bordering on callousness. “I mean, it’s too much.” Among the group of people I spend time with in Bay Ridge, where people still fly American flags with the words “Never Forget” embroidered among the stripes, such thoughts would never be uttered. It would be blasphemy. But she said it as though it were a perfectly natural reaction. Since she is a recent transplant, I assumed that her lack of sympathy could be attributed to the fact that she hadn’t been here to experience the event and its aftermath first hand. That or she’s just a stinking foreigner.

My next meeting, over lunch, was with a lifelong New Yorker who lives on the West Side of Manhattan and was in the city, watching from his 45th floor apartment that day. His experience was totally different from the Brazilian woman’s, but his feelings were quite similar.

We were sitting in the back of the restaurant, with no one else near by, but still he spoke in hushed tones. He prefaced his remarks by saying, “I know I shouldn’t say this, but…” and because of my previous meeting I knew right away what was coming. What I could not imagine was how it would arrive.

“I can’t stand it,” he said, his voice betraying a hint of anger. “I’m just sick of it, all the moaning and the violins,” he went on, adding, “It’s just so unseemly.” I was beyond shocked, and I’m pretty sure my lower jaw dropped into my Salade Nicoise. I had been under the assumption that the collective grief that gets broadcast around the country, the world even, every September 11th was a central part of every New Yorker’s life. What I was hearing told a very different story. As the meal went on, he elaborated: “At first I could understand, but it’s been seven years already. I mean, when does it end? Seven? Ten? Twenty? When is it enough?”

Walking back to the office, I sent a quick note to Arthur asking how he was doing, and we began trading texts. He seemed in good spirits, and I found myself writing about business, feeling guilty about it, and then doing it again. I realized then that I was a grief fence-sitter. My closeness to Arthur made it important to me that I recognize and share some of his experience, but I could also understand and relate to some of the things that others had been saying. When is it enough? Will there really be a “9/11 – Seventeen Years Later” television program? Will the names of all the victims still be read aloud in 2018? I began to wonder if the whole process had gone beyond mourning the dead, and instead had become celebrating the grief of the living. And if that were the case, wasn’t it all just a little too self-indulgent?

After finishing a few things in the office, I was on my way back to Brooklyn. I had hoped to leave right after my lunch meeting, around 2PM. Instead, I left smack in the middle of rush hour.

As I mentioned, I’m trying to get a start-up off the ground, so I usually come to work very early and stay very late. At the same time, I am my own boss, so if I feel like going to the gym in the morning or simply hitting the snooze button a dozen times, there’s no one to chew me out when I come in at 10:30. The result is that I very rarely (almost never) take the train at rush hour. After yesterday, I never will.

The New York City subway is a marvel in that it gets so many people to so many places every day almost without fail. It is also a marvel for the smell, grime, stench, filth, and general unpleasantness that await all of those people when they descend into that singularly urban experience. On a slightly humid late summer day at the peak of rush hour, the experience is like something out of Star Trek’s “The Mark of Gideon,” only without the blond hottie, and you’re no Captain Kirk.

By the time I was mercifully belched out of my subterranean misery, I knew that Arthur would be at home, preparing for that evening’s memorial service on the 69th Street Pier, a service at which he would be the keynote speaker. When I arrived at his house, in true Arthur style, he was neither getting dressed nor preparing his speech. He was sitting on the living room floor playing with his son. I joined them, and while Luca played, Arthur and I talked about the day. I shared some of the things I had heard, and some of the things I had thought, in reference to the day and its ongoing memorial significance. Arthur listened quietly, and then spoke without a hint of defensiveness: “You don’t get it,” was all he said. Then he left me to watch his son while he showered and dressed.

The 69th Street Pier, also known as the Veterans Memorial Pier, juts out from 69th Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn into New York Harbor. From it you get a spectacular view of the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan in one direction, and the Verrazano Narrows bridge in the other. Last night, with the array of flags fluttering in a steady breeze, the twin beams of light shining skyward from Ground Zero, and the outline of the bridge etched in green lights against the night sky, it was truly a beautiful place to be. And when Arthur stepped up to speak, I quickly learned this would be no grief session.

Speaking freely and off-the-cuff, Arthur started with a series of anecdotes about his brother, Crazy Joe, and quickly had us all laughing. He imitated his voice and his mannerisms, and because the only thing funnier than Joe is probably Arthur imitating Joe, we were soon wiping tears of laughter from our eyes. Then, like all good, natural speakers, Arthur changed the tone. He did so by remembering a death, but it wasn’t Crazy Joe’s.

Two weeks ago, the 3 year old daughter of another lifelong neighborhood friend of Arthur’s died in a boating accident. It was one of those senseless, shocking, unexplainable things that sometimes happens in life, and it tore another hole through the fabric of this close-knit community. Arthur described the dinner he had with the father of the little girl two days ago, and told the people huddled together on that pier the one thing that heartbroken father wanted them to know. All the little things we spend our days worrying about, like jobs and money and career, that we think are so important, those things are meaningless. Then Arthur took it a step further.

“Nothing means anything,” he said.

He went on to explain that all that matters is community, the neighborhood, the family, people looking out for each other. He explained that when he thinks about 9/11 and his brother Crazy Joe, he doesn’t actually think about 9/11 at all. He thinks about the 12th, the 13th, the 14th, the 15th. The days when complete strangers took each other by the hand and comforted each other. When strangers became neighbors and neighbors became family. He said that the reason he knows that if something were to happen to him, Luca would be alright, or if something were to happen to Luca, he would be alright, is because every year these same people come to this pier and by their very presence show that no matter what horrible events might occur, all of them will always have people to look out for them.
As Arthur stepped back from the microphone, the emcee of the event asked everyone holding a flag to raise it high, and a choral singer from the local church began singing God Bless America.

I am not what I would call an overtly patriotic person. I love America, but I never put an American flag decal on my car, and I think that much of the post 9/11 flag flying was over the top. But last night, in that context, on that pier, it wasn’t. Those people, family and friends of one victim of the 9/11 attacks, live in the community of Bay Ridge, but they represented the greater borough of Brooklyn, stood for the larger city of New York, and in some strange way, when they raised those flags, were emblematic of something even larger. By standing together on that day, and all the other days like that to come, they take the memory of a tragic event and turn it into a feeling of belonging and community from which they can draw strength and comfort on every other day of the year. Being a part of it was incredibly powerful, totally unexpected, and completely enlightening.

Arthur was right. I didn’t get it. But now I do.

Hypocrites, Subversives, and Public Education

I was first exposed to the hypocrisy of public education during my teacher certification program at NCSU. In a class called Schools and Society, I was assigned the task of researching and reporting on recent ballot initiatives on the use of vouchers in public school systems. At the time, the two most recent initiatives had taken place in Florida and Michigan.

For the uninitiated, a simplified explanation of voucher programs follows:

Voucher programs allow parents of children in failing schools to move their children to an alternate school of their choice. The voucher has a dollar value that is roughly equal to the cost of educating a child in the public school system, but the parents can choose to apply that value to the cost of attending a school outside the public school system. Critics of voucher programs argue that they take precious resources out of the public schools. Proponents argue that giving parents choices will force failing schools to improve in order to “compete” in the education marketplace.

What I found when I looked into the Florida and Michigan ballot initiatives was that in both cases, right up until a month before the election, polls indicated a comfortable majority of voters favored the idea, at least on a limited, experimental basis. Then the two largest teacher’s unions, the NEA and the AFT, came in and over the next 30 days spent millions of dollars on advertising designed to discredit and defeat the initiatives. In both cases they were successful.

It is quite possible that the voucher proposals would have failed without the unions’ involvement, but we’ll never know. It is also possible that the Florida and Michigan voucher experiments would have been unsuccessful. That’s another thing we’ll never know. What we do know is teacher certification programs tell prospective teachers to experiment, be creative, be willing to try anything to educate your students, because you never know what might work. Yet while teachers experiment, the teacher’s unions spend teacher dues by the millions to squelch experimentation. There’s a word for that, and the word is hypocrisy.

I never gave a dime to a teacher’s union.

During my year-end review at the end of my fifth and last year teaching, my principal went through the standard evaluation form, on which I was rated well above standard in every category except one: communicates well with colleagues (imagine that). Then she got personal. “I don’t trust you,” she admitted. “I think you’re a subversive.” I felt like I had been transported back in time.

As a student, I was called to the principal’s office more times than I could ever count. Most often it was for general misbehavior, but in my time I was called disruptive, offensive, a ne’er-do-well, and on one celebrated occasion in France, a “danger publique.” But it wasn’t until I was a forty-six year old teacher with five years experience that a principal ever called me a subversive.

Thing is, she was right.

One of the joys of teaching comes when you recognize a special quality in a student and, like a seed gardener with a young seedling, feed that quality and watch it grow. On rare occasions, that growth leads to something truly special, the kind of experience that makes teaching quite simply the greatest job in the world. Such was the case with a student of mine, a student we’ll call Jim.

Jim was gifted, and I knew from the start I’d have to work to keep him challenged, since he mastered the 9th grade English curriculum almost without trying. Much of the time I didn’t even bother having him do the class assignment, but instead gave him a NY Times crossword puzzle, or a section from a practice SAT test. He loved and rose to the challenges I presented him with, and eventually he was helping me write quizzes, tests, and brain teasers for the rest of the class. The following year he quickly realized that Honors 10th grade English, taught by a National Board Certified teacher who was also perhaps the laziest, worst teacher in the school, would not be quite so rewarding. He again came to me looking for a challenge.

Out of respect for my colleague (respect she didn’t deserve) I decided to give him something extra-curricular, so as not to undermine her classroom authority. And because I was once a smart, bored kid just like him, I made it something fun. I encouraged him to start an underground newsletter (like she said, subversive).

To give me plausible deniability, we never spoke openly about the project. He involved several classmates he could trust, but never told me who they were. Although I didn’t approve topics or proofread articles, I did, through cryptic conversations in the hallways or after school, gently nudge them in certain directions.

“Hey Mr. Dobyns, what do you think of the new dress code?”

“All students hate the dress code. There’s nothing new there.”

The first issue appeared out of nowhere, strategically placed in the bathrooms shortly before lunch. I am proud to say it was very well-written, and carefully examined the questions it posed from multiple sides. In fact, there was almost nothing written in it that I would have called objectionable. There was, however, a rather unflattering caricature of the principal wearing a swastika.

Within minutes, a team of administrators swooped through the bathrooms en masse, collecting and destroying all the copies.

For the second issue, they stayed away from cartoons and widened their distribution. The primary question they examined was just how nutritious are school lunches, and not surprisingly the answer they arrived at was not very. They examined the data, and it was disturbing: Of 6 lunch lines in the cafeteria, only one served a “healthy” lunch; the rest served pizza and French fries. They conducted interviews, and they were alarming: The cafeteria manager pointed out that they had to have the healthy alternative to provide free/reduced lunches, but speculated how much more money they would make if they didn’t. I was ecstatic. In a state where the rate of obesity among high school age children is well above the national average, this was an issue that needed to be addressed. Of course, the administration felt otherwise, and all the copies were again gathered up and destroyed.

Frustrated by the administration but still determined to be heard, they changed their tactics. Rather than publish a newsletter, they emailed, texted, MySpaced, and Facebooked their next initiative, and it was a doozy. The following Thursday, in an inspired act of civil disobedience that had me practically busting with pride and joy, they staged a lunch-out, opting to bring lunch rather than buy what the school offered. In a school cafeteria that normally serves 2000 lunches a day, fewer than 300 were purchased.

Anyone who has taught the current cell phone, I Pod, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister generation knows that they really don’t seem to care about much of anything that doesn’t carry a brand. But here they were engaged in underground organizing for a common cause, and it was a just cause. I was blown away. Of course, yet again, the administration saw it differently.

Shortly before the end of the day, the principal came on the school intercom system and announced that if the lunch-out were to be repeated, several members of the cafeteria staff would be fired. Here was an educator, charged with the difficult task of educating and inspiring a largely disaffected crowd of young people. Suddenly, they became energized and inspired on their own, and all she had to do was engage them in the process, channel their energy, encourage them to promote their cause through existing and accepted channels within the system, and instead she told them their actions were going to put innocent people out of work. It was as if the collective spirit of the student body was suddenly smothered with a wet blanket. I’d say she’s a hypocrite, but really she’s just a dumb-ass.

Shortly thereafter, one of the newsletter writers, a senior, was discovered. He was a former student of mine, an excellent writer, and top 5 in his class. During his interrogation, the administration threatened to withhold his scholarships if he didn’t turn in his collaborators. He refused. They threatened him with expulsion, and still he refused. Eventually, they settled on him reading a mea culpa, written by the administration, over the intercom, and followed that with a three day suspension. In an egregious violation of his rights, they did not contact his parents until after the interrogation was completed and his mea culpa had been read.

I listened to that student’s forced humiliation, in which he castigated his fellow students for following him in a misguided, dangerous, and disruptive activity, and I wanted to cry. I listened to the principal’s “I hope you learned your lesson” afterward, and I wanted to smash something.

I taught for another year and a half, but a big piece of what made me want to be a teacher died that day.

The Call from The Hall

I suspect that in the days before email, getting “The Call” might have actually meant getting a phone call from a highly-placed representative who, with appropriate fanfare befitting the occasion, would inform you that you had finally made it, your day had come. Or at least you were closer to making it than you had previously been, and your day to begin the process of determining if your day had come had come, or something like that. Sadly, in our modern, all-wired-all-the-time, have you checked your inbox in the last thirty seconds times, there was no Call from The Hall at all.

What I received was an email from a guy who has sent me no fewer than two dozen emails since May of this year, an email whose subject heading was “Ult HOF calling?” Truth be told, I was so certain that this was another admonishment for another failure to adhere to another deadline for submitting my evaluation of another form that I hadn’t reviewed that I deleted the email off my Blackberry without reading it. It was only after I returned to the office and checked my email from my desktop that I found that yes, indeed, I had gotten “The Call.” As you might imagine, I wasn’t quite so thrilled by the honor as I never really thought I would be.

Thus began the vetting process, but unlike Sarah Palin, I can’t say it was like a visit from the IRS and the proctologist at the same time. In fact, it really wasn’t much of a visit at all. It was more like a prize announcement from the Publisher’s Clearinghouse, but without the magazine subscriptions. Greetings! You may have already been named to the Hall of Fame. At the very least, you have been selected to the “Slate of 8,” (their term, not mine) and you should consider yourself honored to be among the eight finalists who have been chosen to be under consideration for the honor of possibly being inducted into the Hall of Fame. All you have to do is fill out the attached seven page self-aggrandizement form and have each of three friends/teammates/acquaintances fill out the attached suck-up form and get all these supporting materials returned to us with a photograph no later than five days from now.

There is nothing the UPA loves like a deadline.

When the inductees from the Class of 2008 were announced and I realized I was not among them, I asked via email why I had been snubbed. What I was told is that no one had realized I was old enough until the voting had already been done. I was also told that while it was an “embarrassment” that I hadn’t been inducted in the first year of my eligibility I was not alone. Other prominent and potentially deserving players had also been overlooked. What I couldn’t help thinking at the time was, if this is such an embarrassment, if so many deserving players were overlooked, why don’t you just extend the deadline? I mean, how hard would it be to re-open the voting?

Now don’t get me wrong. I mean, I’m all for strict adherence to deadlines, and I have no problem with not letting that slacker from Ambush (it was Ambush, right?) play because all the other teams did play by the rules and did get their rosters in on time and did deserve the right to pound the shit out of Ambush even worse than they would have if the rules had been bent a little. Besides, if you make an exception for them where do you stop? It’s the principle of the thing. What I’m not so sure is how the same principle applies to the Hall.

By that I mean, if our fledgling shrine to the glory of the past achievements of the legends of our little game decided to extend the deadline or even re-open the voting to right an obvious wrong, who would be hurt? Would all the other marginal sports with fledgling shrines rise up in protest because they, too, through some unfortunate oversight, overlooked the eligibility of Weasel McNulty, a true god of the game, but they didn’t re-open their voting or extend their deadline? That seems just a tad unlikely. But perhaps a more salient question is just how important are Hall of Fame deadlines anyway?

On the UPA site Hall of Fame page we can learn that the selection process is an extremely complicated, multi-layered affair with a series of periodic deadlines running from March to August. But the one that really sticks out in my mind is the one at the bottom that says that once the voting has been completed, a press release will be issued on the fourth Monday in August with the names of that year’s class of inductees. Click on the “Press Releases” link at the top of the page and what do you find out?

Of the four press releases announcing HOF inductions, not one was released on the fourth Monday in August. The earliest release date was for the inaugural class, and it was dated November 1, 2004. On average, UPA Hall of Fame press releases can be expected to be issued about three and a half months late.

Which once again sets me to wondering just how important HOF deadlines are.

But I’m letting that nagging question get in the way of my immeasurable joy at making the Sl8 (better, don’t you think?). Although to be truthful I was not nearly so pleased to receive the honor of the candidacy as I was to be given an excuse to fill out an lengthy form detailing the myriad impressive accomplishments of my most favorite player, me. I’ll leave it to you to imagine what a wonderful read the self-aggrandizement form of an accomplished egotistical blowhard such as myself must be, and I might even share some of the tastier tidbits if not for the fact that to do so would in some way tarnish the solemn significance of the process. Nonetheless, I will share a few of the achievements that didn’t quite make the cut.

Fall of some year at some tournament someplace: Pat King cutting downfield catches a lead pass near the endzone when some douche bag covering him makes a gratuitous layout bid, threatening to take out (and possibly break) his ankles. I’m in the end zone and make my classic near corner break for the goal, but Pat, desperately trying to keep his legs away from the defender who is now attempting to roll both of his ankles simultaneously, doesn’t see me. We (Pat and I) arrive at the front corner of the end zone almost simultaneously, at which point I express my concern for his safety by saying “how about a little less dancing and a little more looking.” Now that’s a teammate.

Nationals of some year someplace: looking through the program to help calm his pre-game nerves, rookie Mike Palmer-Poroner reads the line describing KABOOM! as an enigma. He sheepishly asks, “What does enigma mean?” Taking the poor, frightened soul under my wing, I reply “It means you’re a fucking idiot.” Now that’s leadership.

Some place at some time somewhere: I’m covering Phil “Guido” Adams in the end zone when he breaks to the corner and the pass is thrown. I’m in perfect position for the layout block, but somehow, while we’re both diving, he reaches around me (Yes, I’ve heard the rumors about Guido, too.) to make an astonishing grab. I land on his arm in such a way as to obscure the outcome of the play from everyone but me, and then rip the disc from his hand. He rightly calls strip, and I contest the call. Now that’s spirit.

My point here is that those of you playing the game now are playing at a time when the Hall of Fame is a reality. My generation played not only when it wasn’t a reality, but when it wasn’t even deemed necessary, possible, reasonable, called for, insert your own phrase indicating how ludicrous the idea would have been to all of us running around in our short shorts way back when. Today’s player has the benefit of knowing that some day he or she will be judged by the HOF selection committee, and they will place a high premium on spirit, fair play, and the image the player presented for the sport. We judged ourselves on only two questions: how hard did you party, and could you still win? So it is that, somewhat ruefully, I submitted my application to the Hall. I am deeply sorry for my past transgressions, and wish I could go back and right some wrongs. I’m hopeful that my numerous spirit violations won’t keep me out of the most hallowed institution our sport can claim, but I am prepared to suffer the consequences of my actions humbly and without recrimination.

Oh, and one more thing: I’m NOT sorry!

Good Girl - Postscript

Poppy’s story is one I’ve needed to tell for years, and it was not easy. Still, having finally completed it, and based on some of the reactions, I feel confident that I did succeed in sharing some of what made her special. Still, I’m a storyteller, and in telling Poppy’s story I had to leave out certain elements because they are, strictly speaking, not part of Poppy’s story. Some of those elements are important. One of them is Fennel.

Fennel was abandoned, found by my brother on the side of the road in early October of ’98, two months before Poppy and I moved down to NC. Brian sent me two Polaroids (back when people still did such things) of his wife, Bliss, sitting on the couch with this adorable, pudgy, black and white pup. In the first, looking about 8 weeks old and slightly bewildered, he sits in that awkward, tilting, puppy way, next to but not touching Bliss. In the second, clearly startled by the flash of the first, his eyes are huge, his look terrified, and he is pressing himself into Bliss in an effort to hide. Needless to say, I was smitten.

Fennel is a sweet dog, with a bull terrier chest and head, lab tail and paws, and pointer markings. He has enough love for the whole world twice over, and not an aggressive bone in his body. He and Poppy got along beautifully. Still, there was little doubt that Poppy was number one, Fennel was always fighting for attention, and that neediness tended to make him a little annoying.

As a puppy, he was a chewer (which Poppy had never really been) and he went through remotes, shoes, table and chair legs, and the like, before he finally grew out of it. That was a little exasperating. He also reacted to being left alone for long periods of time by climbing on counters and generally getting into mischief. Poppy would never have done that.

When it came time to train/discipline Fennel I used my best, stern voice (what I called “beating him with my words”), but he seemed to hardly notice. Poppy, on the other hand, would drop her ears and slink over to her bed, as though she had displeased me terribly. Eventually I learned to separate them before I did any training or discipline. In other words, my dogs trained me.

I note with some amusement that for years I assumed that any mischief created while my attention was diverted or I was away was always attributable to Fennel, and he always received whatever meager discipline I meted out. That is, until the Day of the Flour.

I love to bake, and when I was a teacher I would periodically bake cookies for my classes. Because I taught three blocks with average class sizes in the low 30s, that meant baking a bunch of cookies. One day, while preparing to bake, I realized I didn’t have enough butter. I ran to the store, leaving a 5 pound bag of flour on the shelf, thinking “Fennel won’t have any interest in that.” When I returned, I was not all that surprised to find flour all over the house. But I did find something surprising.

Picture a dark, hardwood floor, and white powder everywhere. Off to the side, looking a little startled, sits Fennel. Smack in the middle of the greatest concentration of white powder sits a figure that might be a dog. She is completely covered in white powder. Some of it, especially around her snout, seems caked on, and in that sea of white the only things that stand out are her two brown eyes, sheepishly blinking her guilt.

I never blamed Fennel again.

After Poppy’s death, Fennel went through an amazing transformation. No longer preoccupied with trying to get attention, he mellowed. Being more relaxed, he behaved better, obeyed commands, and generally turned into a wonderful dog. He still is, but I have now relocated to New York. For a while, my aunt lived in my house and took care of him, but that was only a temporary fix while I determined if I would be in New York long-term. Recently I determined that I will be, and the decision was made to send Fennel to live with my brother, his two young sons, and his two, lumbering, two-year-old female lab mixes.

On my last visit down south I packed up Fennel’s things, bundled up his bed, and moved him to my brother’s. When I came back to my North Carolina house that night, for the first time in almost 14 years, I walked into my home to find no dog waiting for me. No home has ever felt so empty. That was when I learned the answer to the questions I asked when Poppy died.

Our lives, no matter how full we make them, are equally full of little spaces that can only be filled by something special. For some people that special thing is another person, a child, or maybe fire-bellied toad. For me, that special thing is a dog. As much as the emptiness that Poppy left behind broke my heart, all the tiny little spaces she filled for all those years went almost unnoticed. Now, with her long gone, Fennel moved away, and me living in New York, I am once again noticing those little spaces.

I live now in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. My next door neighbor has a Jack Russell Terrier named Sammy who holds court on the front lawn all day long. Recently, when leaving for work in the morning or coming home at night, I’ve taken to stopping and spending a little time with Sammy. I scratch his ears and rub his belly, and he nuzzles his silly little snout against my leg. I doubt I would ever choose a Jack, but when I spend time with Sammy I can feel those little spaces filling up again, and it feels very good.

I’m thinking maybe it’s time.

Good Girl - Part IV

Every summer, in the Italian town of Siena, they run a horse race called the Palio. They don’t run it at an established horse racing venue, or even at a local dirt oval that is pressed into service for the occasion. No, they run it in the Piazza del Campo, the cobble-stoned town square.

Shaped like a semi-circle, the Piazza is covered with a deep layer of dirt, and mattresses are positioned against the exterior walls of the buildings at the corners, to protect the horses and jockeys. The interior is cordoned off and packed with race fans, much like the infield at Churchill Downs or Pimlico. But this is neither the Kentucky Derby nor the Preakness. It’s the Palio, and it’s a much bigger deal.

The town of Siena is divided into districts, called Contradas, and each district enters a horse in the race, so the outcome is a matter of civic pride. During the days leading up to the race, every district brings its representative horse and jockey into their local church for a benediction, an event so important to the community that the seats for it are sold out a year in advance. At night, the local restaurants and bars are filled with partisan citizens arguing the relative strengths of their district’s horse, and boasting of their impending victory. By day, parades and pageantry turn the town into a giant festival, Mardi Gras and Carnival with horses. In fact, it is safe to say that the horses, trainers, jockeys and citizens of Siena spend the entire year preparing for and building up to this race. And how long does the race last? The winning horse generally completes three laps around the Piazza in less than a minute and a half. A whole year of preparation for 90 seconds of action. That’s what it was like for Poppy.

Poppy loved to eat. Throughout her life, nothing other than Eukanuba Lamb and Rice ever filled her bowl, but she truly loved that kibble. She wolfed it down so fast, that I used to say that she spent 23 hours and 59 minutes every day thinking about eating, and one minute eating. For Poppy, every meal was the Palio.

That’s why I should have known something was wrong when she stopped finishing her food .

My first thought was that after ten years of eating the same kibble she had simply grown tired of it, so I tried an alternate. Then I considered the possibility that, as a function of her aging, her mouth had gotten a little tender, and maybe I simply needed to soak her food in warm water to make it softer. Any change I made seemed to solve the problem for a while, but soon afterward she was leaving food in her bowl again. Then, I was looking for a simple answer, because I didn’t want to consider the possibility that it was something serious. We never want to imagine the worst. Now, years later, I wonder how I could have been so stupid.

Pretty soon, I started to notice the weight loss, and then it occurred to me that she seemed to be drinking more water than usual. But there was nothing in the way she was behaving that suggested anything serious. She was as playful as ever, and seemed healthy enough. But when the loss of appetite continued, I decided to take her to the vet.

Poppy had always hated the vet, and this visit was no different. She tensed up and spread her paws wide, dropping her belly to the floor and refusing to walk on the slick tile. I had to lift her onto the scale and the examination table, and when her blood was drawn, she looked at me sadly with her big brown eyes and whimpered. The vet asked me a few questions, nodded knowingly at my answers, and evinced a somber manner that was more than a little troubling. But when the assistant cracked open a can of wet food, a delicacy which Poppy had never tasted before, she ate enthusiastically, and my spirits were buoyed. On the way out, the vet asked me if I had recently changed the radiator fluid in my car. I had. He nodded knowingly, and told me he’d call the following day with the results of the blood work.

On the way home from the vet I stopped and bought all sorts of wet food, some in cans and some in pouches. I bought it with the awe and wonder that might be felt by an immigrant from a less affluent country who suddenly steps into an American market and sees all the bounty to be found there. I simply had no idea that so much variety existed. I bought beef and fish and chicken with rice and peas and carrots, some with gravy and some without. I bought it giddy with excitement at the thought of solving Poppy’s problems with something so simple as a change of food. But truthfully, I bought it with a combination of a vague unease and a profound understanding of the futility of the endeavor.

The following day, a Friday in late October, the vet called and gave me the news: Poppy had kidney failure, the kind of condition that is often brought on by consuming even a small amount of ethylene-glycol, the chemical component found in anti-freeze. He asked again about me changing my radiator fluid, but I assured him that Poppy’s appetite had started to wane a good month before I had done so. No matter, he said, and suggested I bring her back in right away for a complete flush of her fluids, a process he said would require a three day stay in the animal hospital. When I pressed him he admitted that at most it would buy her an additional six months. Poppy was dying, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

I called a colleague and asked him to cover my fourth block class, then drove home in a daze. I started to question my memory of the time line of her illness. Had she stopped eating that long ago? Could I be responsible for killing her? The thought was too awful to bear, so I set it aside and started considering the alternatives. How miserable would a three day stay in an animal hospital be for Poppy when she couldn’t stand a fifteen minute visit to the vet? What would those six months (at most) be like? And finally, sadly, pitifully, what would it all cost? As a third year teacher working two side jobs to make ends meet, I had only recently decided to replace a blown head gasket in my Pathfinder myself because I couldn’t afford to pay my mechanic to do it. I simply didn’t have the money to cover an expensive vet bill, particularly one that would only buy her another six months of dying. I called the vet and told him we wouldn’t be coming back. Then I called another vet, a close family friend who made house calls, and asked her to come by the following Monday afternoon.

That weekend, my cousin’s husband Lewis helped me fix the Pathfinder. We broke it down to the engine block and replaced the head gasket. We took the opportunity to replace the timing belt, water pump, thermostat, starter and distributor cap as well. It took the better part of two days, and whenever we were working Poppy was lying in the back of the car. I would pop back periodically to check on her, make sure her blankets were keeping her warm, and give her a hug. When Lewis went to get lunch and brought back Arby’s, I fed her roast beef and curly fries, an event so unheard of that it probably tipped her off that something was up (that and the fact that her kidneys were failing). At meal times, I fed her from the cornucopia of wet food options I had picked up, and generally spoiled her in every way possible, even letting her sleep on my bed.

Sunday night I had a horrible dream. I think it was brought on in some way by a photograph I have on my refrigerator of Poppy lounging on an inflatable blue raft in the middle of the pool at Mike Nevins’ family home in Montclair, NJ. She looks altogether natural, even comfortable, a contented mass of chocolate brown surrounded by a deep, cool blue, and her expression seems to say, “What? You still think dogs don’t belong in the pool?” It’s a photo that has always made me happy, but the dream was anything but. We were in a pool, but Poppy was on the bottom, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t bring her to the surface. Eventually, running out of air, I had to choose between trying to save her and saving myself. I woke in anguish, thinking not of cool blue but of bright, iridescent green.

I went in to school and taught my first two classes, though I can’t imagine it was much of a lesson. Then, with the same obliging colleague covering my fourth block, I left school around 11AM and headed home. I had asked the vet to be there at 3, which I figured would give me enough time to prepare. On the way home I called my aunt, Aunt T, who dearly loved Poppy, told her the dream and asked if she wanted to come over and say good bye.

Whenever I needed someone to watch Poppy, Aunt T, volunteered. Over the years she had come to love her, and I knew she would miss her deeply. She is, like me, a dog person. She is also the world’s most prolific note writer, and whenever she watched Poppy I would return to find my refrigerator stocked with Tupperware containers with post-it notes saying utterly superfluous things like “soup,” and “vegetables.” Sometimes I’d find one on Poppy’s food bin saying “need food,” as though it weren’t obvious enough. And always, always on the green plastic 1997 WSL beer cup cut down to just the right size to measure Poppy’s food, “fed dinner.” I used to make fun of her for her notes. In fact, I still do. But on this day, there was no making fun.

When she arrived she stepped through the door purposefully, clutching her date book in her hand. She went straight to the kitchen counter, flipped the book open, and pointed. There in the same hand that had written so many useless things over the years, was a single line: “P didn’t finish dinner – need to tell K.” The date was almost three weeks before I had begun working on the car. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “Just let her go.”

I left her with Poppy and went outside. The air was crisp, and fall rode on the steady eastward wind that blew leaves across the yard. I walked down to a corner of the garden and, in an open patch of grass where Poppy used to lie in the sun and watch me tend the plants, I started to dig.

To say that the soil in my yard is unforgiving is putting it mildly. I’ve been ameliorating the planting beds in my garden for seven years, but in the area I’d chosen for Poppy the composition is still about two inches of grass roots in topsoil on top of a bed of Carolina clay. After clearing off the top layer with a square blade shovel, I got to work with the pick axe.

I had imagined the exercise would be both nostalgic and therapeutic, with all the wonderful memories of her life running through my head like a slide show, dulling my grief while I prepared her final resting place, but it wasn’t. It was mindless, my head empty, the steady rasping of the pickaxe and random rustling of leaves undercut by my labored breathing. Periodically I’d lay the pickaxe aside, grab a small shovel, and add to the growing pile of dirt beside the deepening hole. At those times, without the steady rhythm of the pickaxe to build on, the rest of the sounds seemed to disappear. Those were the times when I felt the worst, when the enormity of what I was doing was inescapable. I grabbed the pickaxe again quickly.

I have no idea how long I was digging, but because I wanted her to fit comfortably, I made sure the hole was wide, and because I wanted her to be safe, I made sure it was deep. Looking back, it must have taken hours and by the time I was done my shirt was wet with perspiration, and Aunt T, her eyes red with tears, was ready to go. She gave me a hug at the door, Poppy pulled herself out of bed, and in the most heart-rending moment of the day, gave her last five holes.

When the vet arrived I was lying next to Poppy’s bed. The door was unlocked, and I called to her to come on in while I stayed with Poppy. She did, and got right to work, unpacking her bag quietly. The whole process was incredibly quick and, I hope, painless. I held Poppy in my arms while she gave her the first shot, the one that put her to sleep. Unlike at the vet’s, she never got agitated, and didn’t make a sound. The second shot, following soon after, stopped her heart. Though I still held her in my arms, just like that, she was gone.

Being a family friend she refused payment, and though I knew it was the right thing to do it felt positively bizarre to thank her. She drove away and I took a walk in the woods alone, on the same paths we had walked together thousands of times. I thought of the life she had led. For seven of her ten years she had lived on this property, running through the woods chasing animals or their smells, bounding through the creek, rolling in the mud. She would never run off, so she never had to wear a collar or a leash. She lived a good life, was universally loved, and on this day those thoughts should have brought me comfort, but they didn’t.

They say the most unnatural thing is a parent burying a child. By contrast, even those of us who treat our animals almost like children know from the very day we get them that we will probably live to see them die. So why does it hurt so much? More to the point, why do we do it? Why do we tie our hearts to these creatures knowing full well that someday we’ll live to see them at the bottom of a hole, waiting for us to cover them with dirt? Why do we knowingly let our pets occupy huge places in our lives when we can just as knowingly anticipate the day when that same place will be hopelessly, irretrievably empty?

Returning from my walk, I pulled my black Cojones shirt out of a drawer, and a rawhide bone off a shelf, then went outside and placed them in her grave. Back inside, I found her collar and clipped it on. Then I wrapped her in her favorite blanket, and just as I had all those years ago on the very first day I saw her, I held her in my arms and carried her home.

Good Girl - Part III

Her name was Poppy, like the flower, although she wasn’t so named. She was named for the deli where my then girlfriend would wait for me to pick her up after work during the period of time when we (she) got her. The name also makes some reference to a movie about a boy who might have been disabled and that might have starred DeNiro, but as you can see I’m a little unclear on the details. I don’t know that I would have chosen the name, but in the end it worked. It had the requisite two syllables that all dog names should have, so as to make them easy to call out in a sing-song manner when the animal has run off.

On a side note, I once spent New Year’s Day sing-songing the name Biko through the woods of Pound Ridge, New York in a vain search for a friend’s Rhodesian Ridgeback that had run off in pursuit of a deer. It was a terrible experience, but it taught me something about breeding, instinct, and training that it’s wise to keep in mind when selecting a dog. Sight hounds (like Ridgebacks) and scent hounds (like Beagles) will instinctively take off in pursuit of prey, despite years of training, and may never come back. Retrievers, on the other hand, tend to return. It’s in their nature. Of course, if you’ve read Part I you know that I didn’t choose Poppy. She did, however, choose me.

Dogs are pack animals, and as a social order, the pack works because it has a leader. Dogs removed from the pack still look for a leader, and in the absence of one, may assume the role themselves. Spend some time watching the Dog Whisperer to see what I mean. A single dog in a family will usually identify a member of the family as the leader of the pack. It won’t necessarily be the one who feeds the most or walks the most or plays the most. But whoever it is, the dog will focus on that person and respond to his or her motions and emotions above those of everyone else in the family. In our little family, Poppy chose me.

When my girlfriend and I broke up in the winter of ’96, she left Poppy behind. Initially, the stated reason was because she had moved into an apartment that didn’t allow pets, but even when she relocated, she left Poppy with me. She knew, as I did, as Poppy did, that in so far as Poppy was concerned, I was the leader of the pack. Still, in leaving behind the dog she had picked out, the companion she had chosen to help her through a difficult time in her life, she had done an extremely unselfish thing, and a thing for which I will always be grateful. I’m sure I never told her that.

So that’s why Poppy and I ended up together in North Carolina in the winter of ’98, heading over to my sister’s house for a holiday visit shortly before Christmas.

It would be the height of understatement to say that my older sister Denise, the eldest of my three siblings, is a bit high-strung. It would be more accurate to say that her life is one prolonged panic attack tempered by brief intervals of high anxiety. What this means is that pretty much any event in her life is potentially disastrous, and the first and best response to anything out of the ordinary is to scream. That is why, when she opened the door in December of 1998 to find me and Poppy on her doorstep, she reacted as if I had a bloody axe in one hand and the head of her older son in the other. Poppy, as even-tempered a dog as I’ve ever seen, was in no way unsettled by my sister’s screams. Obedient as ever, she reacted as she had been trained to, and that was unfortunate.

Once Poppy had mastered all the basic tricks, I had to move on to others to keep her sharp (and me amused). One of my favorites was the dog biscuit balanced on the snout, held there patiently waiting for the snap of the fingers that told her it was OK to flip the biscuit in the air, catch it, and gobble away. I would leave the room, come back, and leave again, and still she waited. I would fake the snapping motion but make no sound, and still she waited, the saliva dripping down in long strands from her jowls. It was a trick I had seen a friend’s dog perform many years before, and I was very proud of Poppy for mastering it. My girlfriend had different ideas.

An avid hockey fan, she wanted to train Poppy to “five hole” people. For those of you unfamiliar with ice hockey, the five hole is the spot between the goalie’s legs, and “five holing” someone is sending an object, any object, through their legs. It was standard practice at that time for us to throw discs, beer cans, and the like through the legs of friends and foes alike. But to “throw” a dog through? That would be brilliant.

As trainable and eager to please as Poppy was, it didn’t take her long to learn to respond to the command “five hole” by walking through the legs of whoever gave the command. Soon thereafter, she learned to respond by walking through the legs of whichever person was pointed out, much to our delight. So delighted were we, and so pleased was Poppy to experience our delight, that in time the whole trick got a little confused. She began to “five hole” anyone she saw, even complete strangers, hoping to elicit the same delight. Moreover, she would “five hole” them with her whole body wagging back and forth in expression of her happiness at pleasing us. Meanwhile, the person being “five holed” could only awkwardly attempt to maintain his balance while simultaneously wondering why 70 pounds of gyrating dog was passing between his legs.

So there we were, in a charming little cul-de-sac in Raleigh, NC, its tidy houses festooned with festive decorations twinkling their holiday cheer, my sister’s panicked screams piercing the air as she seemed to ride a bucking brown dog backwards around her front porch. Merry Christmas.

Once I convinced my sister that letting Poppy attend the party would not result in her shitting on the carpet, her fleas getting in the carpet, or her eating up the carpet, she somewhat reluctantly let us into her home. What followed is a story I lived more times than I can count. Poppy was perfect. She lay on the floor next to me and didn’t budge unless I told her to. She never begged, no matter how close someone came with food. She never barked, growled, whined, or otherwise made a sound. And when my niece and nephews petted, poked, pulled and prodded, she didn’t flinch, not even when my sister’s toddler climbed onto her back and yanked on her ears.

While the party was in its extended good-bye phase, and we were all variously chatting in small groups and making our ways to our cars laden with Tupperware, my sister confided that despite her calm demeanor (remember, this is her speaking) she was certain that having a dog in her home would result in some calamity. Precisely what calamity she wasn’t sure, but most likely one involving a small child bleeding profusely from the gaping hole where a limb used to be and Poppy running around the house with the bleeding limb in her mouth. Although I didn’t say it at the time, I feel certain that the most upsetting part of my sister’s imaginary calamity was not the prospect of one of her children being permanently disfigured so much as the quandary of how she was ever going to get all of that blood out of the carpet.

Fortunately for everyone, the imagined calamity remained just that, and my sister was left standing on her front porch and marveling at Poppy’s exemplary behavior. In fact, in what was probably the most unexpected praise she ever received in her life, my sister remarked that the only way she could ever see herself getting a dog would be if that dog were Poppy.

At once embarrassed and beaming with pride, I responded by saying the best thing I could ever say about her: “She’s a good girl.”

Good Girl - Part II

It is often said that a dog is a practice child. For certain childless couples at least, I believe it’s true. Cooperatively caring for a dog can be a good indication of whether or not a couple might be able to do the same for a child. Like a child, a dog requires its owners to think of another living being before themselves. There’s certainly plenty of help for parents of both children and dogs in the form of books, DVDs, web sites and the like. I doubt, however, that there are many books that suggest you crate train your children, so perhaps the analogy begins to fall apart there. Still, having recently spent a weekend in Massachusetts with several former teammates and their offspring, such a book might have come in handy. Finally, many parents and dog-owners to be pledge to take equal responsibility for the coming burden but wind giving anything but equal effort.

So it was that, having had my girlfriend unilaterally decide that I would be part owner of a dog, I found myself responsible for both the last walk of the night and the first walk of the morning for our sweet little chocolate lab with the not yet well-developed bladder control. Having read all the right books, we knew about crate training, taking the water away shortly after the evening meal, and walking her soon after play and sleep. What we didn’t know was how to explain the elevator.

Most of us have woken up with a strong, perhaps very strong, need to relieve ourselves at one time or another. The stronger the need, the more troubling the delay, be it a long walk down a hallway, or an exasperating wait for a roommate to vacate the facilities. Well imagine if reaching the facilities required a walk down a hall, a long wait for a strange, windowless room whose doors always open onto a different room, and another long walk down another hallway. Oh, and you’ve only recently been potty-trained. Now you’re getting a picture of what it must have been like for our sweet, little Lab puppy as she tried desperately to hold on long enough to get outside before emptying her bladder.

For a picture of what it was like for me, imagine that it’s a pitch black 5AM in November, you’ve been awakened by a high pitched whining, your last act before going to bed was also a bleary-eyed puppy walk that seems to have happened mere moments ago, and the person who’s responsible for putting you in this predicament is sleeping soundly in a nice cozy bed. And you wonder why I’m single.

Early on it was pretty hopeless. We’d barely make it to the elevator doors before she was squatting. Once we got into the elevator, if she started to squat I’d swoop her up into my arms, and the experience was so surprising that it literally scared the pee right back into her. The downside being that once outside, it usually took a good long while for her to calm down enough to be able to take care of business.

Eventually, the swoop into the air was no longer all that surprising, and I suppose had become almost comforting, so much so that she took to lying in my arms and spraying her urine in a fountainesque stream wherever she happened to be aiming at the time. At first, appalled, I did anything I could think of to stop her. In time, realizing that the hand is not an especially effective mechanism for stopping urine flow, I resigned myself to watching the waterworks.

If anyone reading this happened to reside at 304 E. 20th Street between November of 1994 and February of 1995 you have my apologies. I had every intention of cleaning up when we returned, but somehow the prospect of crawling back into bed was a little too inviting. I’m sure you understand.

In time, she mastered her movements, and we were on to the next level of training.

By any measure, she was a prodigy. At eight weeks she sat on command. By twelve weeks she could sit, lie down, stay, and roll over. Shortly thereafter, she responded to both voice and hand commands, and when she added playing dead to her repertoire, she would do so in response to a silent firing of a finger.

I took her to work with me, where her disposition and intelligence made her a favorite. Our company shipped a lot of packages COD, and every morning the UPS man would bring a cardboard envelope with checks. Our receptionist trained her to carry the UPS envelope to the bookkeeper’s office, where the bookkeeper would take the envelope from her mouth and reward her with a treat. In time, not satisfied with one treat, she would return to the bookkeeper’s office, retrieve the empty UPS envelope from the trash can, slink out of the office quietly, then trot back in with much fanfare and offer the empty envelope to the bookkeeper. Like I said, a prodigy.

Her first tournament was Turkey Bowl ’94, when she was a mere 11 weeks old. We competed under the name Elwood Hound, and won the tourney when, inspired by her presence, I made a layout block and threw the game winning hammer. Her last tournament was Terminus ’99, the only event I ever played with Ring of Fire. Perhaps sensing that this was a one time deal, she made a complete nuisance of herself, slipping her collar and running across several fields mid-point, something she had never done before. In between, she went to many more tournaments, but a couple stand out.

Mother’s Day ’96. She meets Steve Mooney’s pure bred god-knows-what dog and gets into a fight with it. Awesome.

Some random springtime affair where Adam Zagoria, unprepared as usual, secures his dog to my dog’s corkscrew. Having spent the better part of the day being annoyed by Zagoria’s mutt Jasmine, she finally reaches the breaking point and rips off a piece of Jasmine’s ear. Priceless.

A friend of mine once sent his dog to obedience school, and later proudly displayed the certificate he had been awarded for “Longest Down Stay.” What a joke. In the winter of ’97 I took her on a trip to Vermont, and found myself without a place to keep for a snowboarding day trip. I found a doggie day care close by and dropped her off, paying the extra $20 for two outdoor play sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. When I returned to pick her up in the evening they refunded me the $20. Despite their efforts, she had simply refused to go out and play. Leaving her that morning I had told her to stay. She wouldn’t leave until I came and released her.

It was the only time I ever put her in a kennel.

She showed similar devotion some years later, when I competed in a tournament at ECU in Greenville, NC. I arrived at the tournament only to discover that dogs were not allowed at the fields. With no way to secure her in the bed of my 1991 Ford F-150 pickup, I simply told her to stay. And stay she did, all day long.

If only women were as devoted.

Good Girl - Part I

She came into my life on a cold November morning, from the front seat of a 1994 Acura Integra parked on East 20^th St. Her soft brown fur was moist with her own pee, and her little body trembled from fear. Ten years later, on a crisp October afternoon that heralded the coming fall, the rustling of leaves through my garden was broken by the insistent sound of a pickaxe striking North Carolina clay. How can ten years go by so fast? At such times I find the western conception of time as a linear progression, marching along at a steady gait, utterly preposterous. Surely Native Americans have a better handle on time, seeing it as fluid and flowing, like a stream, rushing here, swirling there, a succession of rapids and eddies leading to moments where two events, separated by years, sit side by side.

We grew up with cats, which is probably why I always wanted a dog. My mother, a true cat person, always told us that cats and dogs can’t live together. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized she was lying. So we grew up with cats, a Siamese and a jet black mix, and found them to be worse than useless. They didn’t entertain us, or play, or guard the house, or kill mice or do much except eat, sleep, piss and shit. While we, of course, had to clean the litter box, live on tattered furniture, and on special occasions have our early morning walk to the bathroom punctuated by the indescribable experience of cold cat puke squishing through our toes. On those mornings I understood why the only thing my father ever said about the cats was, “I’m just waiting for them to die.”

And die they did, after many years of waiting. The black one went first, and when the beloved Siamese died, some years later, my father was elated, my mother inconsolable. It was our first experience with the profound anguish of a person who has lost a beloved pet, and we had no idea that in addition to bringing on extreme sadness, it can cause a person to do some pretty outlandish things. So it was that on the day my mother had her precious Willow put down, she went directly to the pet store, and came home with two Siamese kittens. As if that weren’t enough, when my father stepped through the door that evening he found us sitting around the dining room table feeding those kittens filet mignon. He was livid, and probably thought he couldn’t be angrier, but that’s because he didn’t know what was coming.

The following week a package arrived wrapped in brown paper, the kind of packaging that in those days was primarily used for shipping items of “adult entertainment,” and while the contents of this package weren’t pornographic per se, they probably qualified as obscene. Seems my mother had made a stop between the veterinarian and pet store and, her world off kilter from the depths of her sorrow, had somehow thought it reasonable to see a taxidermist. Yes, precious Willow was back from the dead, and my father was back to waiting. His waiting would continue for a very, very long time.

My parents are no longer together for a variety of reasons, but I’m pretty sure the stuffed cat didn’t help.

So like I said, I had always wanted a dog. I even worked as a dog walker while I was in high school, and was absolutely certain that once I was on my own I would get a dog. Of course that was before the Pooper Scooper Law.

On August 1, 1978, the Yankees beat the Texas Rangers to climb to 6 ½ games back of Boston, and New York passed the country’s first Pooper Scooper Law. The Yankees proceeded to lose the next three. That should have told us something right there.

Over the course of the next few years, I watched closely the practices of the dog owners in my neighborhood. Most went with the plastic bag over the hand that they turned inside out after collection, and while this method seemed exceedingly efficient, there was something disconcerting about the thought of grabbing a pile of steaming dog poo, even if you did have a ply or two of plastic protection. Others, who perhaps felt as I did about grabbing the pile, went with the newspaper technique, watching carefully for the dog to assume the position, and then quickly leaning over to thrust a section of the newspaper under its butt just in time to catch the falling feces. When well-executed, the newspaper thrust, catch, fold and dispose is easily the most elegant of the poop scoop methods. Yet one only has to see it go awry once to know it’s not for them. I mean, is there anything more embarrassing, for both parties, than a person bent over at the waist holding a piece of newspaper under a dog’s ass as it skitches awkwardly down the street trying to get the hell away from the lunatic trying to catch its shit with a newspaper?

So I decided not to get a dog after all, at least not until I had moved out of the city. My story was that I wanted a substantial dog, like a Rottweiler, and I couldn’t be so cruel as to confine such an animal to a small, New York City apartment. But it’s closer to the truth to say that, while I did want a substantial dog, I wasn’t all that keen on handling its equally substantial poop.

This brings me to the fall of ’94, my girlfriend who had recently moved to New York from Boston, her desire to get a dog, and our discussion of the relative merits of such a move. I made a convincing case. My lease would be up in February, and we had already decided to move to Westchester. Buying just any old dog from an unscrupulous breeder or worse, a pet store, can bring on all sorts of complications. It’s better to go to a trusted breeder, wait for a new litter, and have your pick of it. She, for her part, had given up her life, including an apartment she loved, a car she loved, and a city she loved, and come down here to live in my apartment, hang out with my friends, and listen to my convincing arguments. She didn’t say it at the time, but I’m pretty sure she was thinking the whole thing had been one big mistake, and maybe, just maybe, a dog could save it. But in the face of my overwhelming logic, she relented. We would get a dog in 3 months when we moved out of the city.

The following morning she went to a doctor’s appointment, in my car, and called me from the road on her way back. “I bought a puppy,” was all she said. “I’ll go to the pet store,” was my reply.

wtf

On a cold, drizzly, November morning in 1984, I woke to the sound of helicopter rotors and the vibrating sheet rock walls of the Pilot House Motel in Santa Barbara, California. In my memory, the sound was so loud, the rotor wash so pervasive, I would have sworn the motel was actually on the tarmac, but across the room Pat King slept right through it. Who could blame him? Getting up would only mean the beginning of another exhausting day dragging our marginally talented team on his back in vain pursuit of our impossible quest, a national title. Another day of playing every point, touching the disc every other pass, drawing the other team’s best defender, and knowing that no matter how well he played it probably wouldn’t be enough. I’d have stayed in bed too.

Pat’s team, KABOOM!, was a dog and pony show whose bulldog was lost for the season to a freak kidney injury. That left the rest of the team riding the pony, Pat, as far as he could carry them. In the past I may have slighted some of my former teammates by suggesting that we weren’t a very good team, but we really weren’t. We were tough and fearless, and we played a slogging, plodding, northeast style that was brutal on the eyes. When we won, we won ugly. Come to think of it, when we lost it was pretty ugly too.

KABOOM! was a ragtag hodgepodge of players who weren’t especially fast, couldn’t throw especially well, and were named after a toasted oat cereal with marshmallow stars. But we had two legitimate star players, and when they were in form we could play with anybody. Alas, when one of them went down with an injury, it was a different story, or so it looked from the sideline where I was standing in November of 1984. I have no idea what it looked like from where Pat was standing. I never found myself in that position because Pat never got injured. Except for that one time…

Back in the day, my brother had an urban landscaping business and he got a job putting a backyard garden in behind an upper west side brownstone. He hired Pat and me, and then told us that our fist job was to remove a sidewalk that ran the perimeter of the yard and was four inches thick. Oh, and we had to do the whole job with a pickaxe and sledgehammer, then haul the pieces out by hand in milk crates. By the time we finished the job Pat had sustained nerve damage in his right wrist from hitting a concrete sidewalk with a pickaxe several thousand times. Being Pat, he didn’t let the cast keep him from playing, although he did play with a tennis ball nestled in the fingers of his right hand to keep him from involuntarily lunging for the disc and causing further damage. It surprised no one that within days Pat could throw better lefty than most of the guys on the team, but I digress.

The average annual rainfall in Santa Barbara is about 15 inches, but on the last day of pool play in 1984 they got about half of that. The wind whipped, the rain came in sheets, and we wrapped ourselves in plastic to stave off hypothermia. But with the game to go to semis being a matchup of the high flying Condors against slogging KABOOM!, the rain was our best friend. With Pat leading the way and me wrapped in plastic, we were leading at half. Sadly, all good things, even miserably cold, driving southern California monsoons, must come to an end. When the sun came out for the second half the Condors came to life, and despite Pat’s efforts, for the second straight year KABOOM!’s season ended one game short of the semi’s.

1985 saw the return of the bulldog, and with the dog and pony show in full swing, KABOOM! finally made it to the semifinals. A hard-fought victory over Windy City earned us a trip to the finals, and earned Pat another brutal job. Having blown my ACL on game point, I was reduced to a sideshow in the finals. It again fell to Pat to carry the team on his back, and did he ever.

If you can stand watching grainy footage of guys wearing short shorts, making a bunch of turnovers, and sliding around on a brutally bad field, get a hold of the 1985 Finals. You will be treated to two delightful treasures.

The first is the commentary of the Condors’ Keay Nakae, a great player who happened to also be a colorful commentator. Late in the second half, with KABOOM! in the midst of an improbable comeback against the Flying Circus, he offers up this gem: “Circus looked like they had this game in the refrigerator, but they left the door open and KABOOM!’s been snacking.”

The second is the play of Pat King. He literally takes over the game. With everybody knowing he has to touch the disc every other pass, he still gets open at will. Point after point he throws a 30 yarder, catches a dump from the receiver, throws another 30 yarder, catches the next dump, and throws a goal. He goes up in a crowd and gets a block, throws a bomb to the goal line, then sprints downfield and catches the goal from the receiver he threw the bomb to. He plays every single point and never seems to tire. And when the game is over and Circus has won, he reacts not with resignation but fury, because he fully expected to win.

So why am I telling this story, and why now? Well, I told it once before, to the UPA Hall of Fame selection committee, several years ago when Pat was first eligible. I added in the details of Pat’s importance to New York, as well as the plain truth that he is quite simply the greatest player I ever played with and absolutely deserving of election into the Hall. I’ll save you the trouble of looking and tell you that the selection committee didn’t see it that way. Not that year, nor in any of the subsequent years when his application for admittance was still eligible for consideration. Initially I was dumbfounded. Now I think I understand. Sadly, my understanding is significantly more troubling than my dumbfoundation (not a word, but should be).

If you do some looking around on the HOF section of the UPA web site you’ll learn a few things. One is that the HOF vetting subcommittee has a distinctly Boston flavor. In 2005, three of the five members were former Boston players. In subsequent years that number drops all the way down to two. Another thing you’ll learn is that five of the past ten players voted into the Hall played all or some of their careers in Boston. A little more pointing and clicking and you’ll learn that of the 18 championships awarded in the Open and Women’s divisions from 1979 to 1988, 3 were won by Boston teams. Imagine that. Half of the players who make it past a committee that is 40-60% Boston players come from….Boston. And yet only one sixth (roughly 17%) of the championships from the early era were won by Boston teams.

By contrast consider that 7 of those early titles were won by California teams (about 40%) and three of the past ten players voted in played in California. Hard to argue with those numbers. But then you see that during those early years Windy City won two titles and lost in the finals twice, but no one from those great teams has been named to the Hall. Is it possible that certain members of the selection process are treating the Hall like their private, restricted club?

Which brings us back to Pat King. On page 70 of the Ultimate History book there’s a full page picture of Pat holding a disc aloft above Brent Russell of the San Diego/LA Iguanas. The caption tells you that Pat spiked the disc wrathfully. For the record, he didn’t. He flicked it backwards away from Brent, and it fell softly to the ground. Did this image and its attendant misinformation hurt Pat’s candidacy? How about the fact that several of the members of the vetting subcommittee had their seasons ended by Pat’s team year after year? Did they let that cloud their judgment? Who knows? What I do know is that Pat had all the skills, played both ways all day long, was a leader on and off the field, and played with great success at the pinnacle of the sport for over a decade. Sounds like a hall of famer to me.

So my question is, What the fuck?

In the interests of journalistic integrity, I should probably point out that although I was eligible for election to the HOF this year I was not selected. Seems the committee didn’t know I was old enough, which serves as a nice reminder that, pretensions to the contrary, we’re still a marginal hobby sport run by a bunch of erstwhile stoners who struggle to get their acts together. By way of explanation cum defense, Jim Parinella said I shouldn’t be offended because they also overlooked Paul Greff. Sadly, the admission didn’t have the desired effect. Pat King has been eligible for years, has applied, and has been rejected. But I’m supposed to feel better because they failed to consider Paul Greff? Sorry.

But I can allay Jim’s concerns about the matter. After all, who would want to belong to any club that doesn’t want somebody like Pat King as a member?

Miles Away and Worlds Removed

New York – Summer 2008

From every dingy basement on every dingy street
I hear every dragging handclap over every dragging beat
Thats just the beat of time-the beat that must go on
If you been trying for years-then we already heard your song

All these years later, so much has changed. Then I wore an army surplus coat, walked Amsterdam Avenue, and had the local street dealers greet me with a sneering, “Hello, Officer,” a misperception that almost certainly kept me out of trouble, but in those days might well have gotten me shot. Now I wear a suit, walk Fifth Avenue, and there aren’t any locals, just gobs of map-toting tourists taking advantage of the weak dollar and looking for a Hard Rock Café. As the late, great George Carlin put it, “If it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?”

Back then I listened to the sounds of the street, steam hissing through cracks in unseen pipes, unseen people hissing unintelligibly, a symphony of decay. Now, like every other disconnected transient I swore I’d never be like, I walk the streets with earbuds planted firmly, sliding past rather than wading through, untouching and untouched. So different, but still the same.

The Summer of ’81 saw The Clash descend on New York for three weeks of shows at Bond International Casino. Anyone who cares probably already knows the story, so I won’t belabor it. Suffice to say that the Times Square they came to, saw, and conquered is long gone, conquered yet again by ESPN, M&Ms, and Planet Hollywood, controlled now by the very corporations The Clash railed against. Back then it was controlled by pimps, dealers and hustlers. Then came Giuliani Time, when America’s Mayor swept the squeegee men and other nuisance criminals from the streets of Times Square to make it safe for the Virgin MegaStore. That’s New York. Only the city is constant; the players are ever-changing. Like the Flemish fields of central Europe, battlefield for centuries, where armies fought for fleeting supremacy, held on long enough to heal their wounds, then fell to the next group. Only the blood was constant. The uniforms were ever-changing.

I left the streets of New York for the lawns of suburbia in the winter of ’95, settling in Harrison with a girlfriend and a chocolate lab puppy. Two years later the girlfriend was gone, and another year after that so was I, in the cab of a U-Haul with the lab no longer a puppy and North Carolina in my sights. We drove all night, although I did most of the driving, and arrived just in time for an early morning ice storm to drop a chunk of a long-leaf pine on the leased Jeep Grand Cherokee I had on a trailer. Welcome to North Carolina.

Despite the harsh welcome, I never imagined I’d move back here. I just couldn’t see myself coming back to this life, a life where you have to fight for everything, where everything is a struggle. What I didn’t realize until just recently is there’s something inside me that needs that battle.

I taught high school English in North Carolina for a little over five years, and in five years, I didn’t miss a single day in the classroom. I came early, stayed late, and taught “bell to bell.” I challenged my students and challenged myself, and for a time those challenges were enough. But eventually it started to bother me that so many of my colleagues neither challenged themselves nor their students. They came late, left early, took sick days as quickly as they earned them, and generally did the absolute minimum. Then, at the end of the month, they got the same check I did. Still I battled. I taught a class that had an End-Of-Course test, and when my students were sufficiently prepared I went into other teacher’s classrooms to help prepare their students. And when the scores were high enough to earn us bonus money, the same slackers who surfed the internet while their students slept got the same bonus check I did. I began to feel bitter. I wanted my efforts to be rewarded and their failures to cost them. I wanted my performance to mean something more. I wanted to compete. In effect, I wanted to be on a Flemish battlefield, and watch my lame-ass colleagues have their limbs chopped off. Figuring that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon, I quit. Then I did what I never thought I’d do. I moved back.

It took all of three weeks for me to feel right at home, or at least comfortable enough to cross the street against the light and flip off a honking cab driver without looking at him. The gesture amused the orderly masses gathered on the corner, diligently waiting for the walk signal. “Oh lookie there. A real New Yorker.” Three weeks for my stride to reflect my contempt for anyone who doesn’t walk quickly enough, move purposefully enough, or know enough to rotate their torsos to allow them to slide through the oncoming foot traffic in a crosswalk without breaking stride. Fucking tourists. Three weeks to scrape away ten years of North Carolina, of please and thank you and after you and as you wish and be my guest and not at all and hey. Now, six months later, I can hardly remember what it feels like to smile in public.

I’m not sure it has to be this way, just as I’m not sure that all those years of pounding our opponents into submission while simultaneously trying to humiliate them were entirely necessary. But we did love the battle, and at this point it’s probably safe to say I need it.

So here I am, after all these years, back in New York, walking the streets listening to The Clash on my Blackberry. If that isn’t an oxymoron it ought to be. I used to say I have no regrets, but it’s a lie. I’ve got regrets by the bushel; I just choose to keep them to myself.

Ten years ago, soon after I moved to NC, a couple of young Ring players tried to entice me to join their team, using as bait the chance to keep Boston from equaling New York’s run of five straight titles. Needless to say, it didn’t work. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. We won a bunch. They won a bunch. And now people play Masters and Grandmasters and sit by the phone waiting for the Hall of Fame to call. So much for the battle.

But there is one thing that does get my goat. When I walk the city streets I listen to every song from The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, and London Calling. Every song except one. That’s something I don’t forgive them for, and never will.

The Battle Endures.

New York: The True Genesis Revealed

I have been amused by the recent flap related to a certain team from California not qualifying for Nationals even though many of the team’s players had already bought plane tickets to Sarasota. Lest you should think that by mentioning it now I am in some way thumbing my nose at that team, I should point out that I was not so amused as to actually determine which team it was. My amusement actually comes from a memory this incident dredged up, a memory of an incident that was potentially far more humiliating than buying a non-refundable plane ticket.

In the weeks that followed the recent and untimely passing of Curtis Wagner, an original member of New York, Pat King hit upon the idea of getting the old crew together to mourn Curtis, celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the founding of The Greatest Team In The History Of The Game, and pass countless hours doing the only thing we loved more than beating our opponents into submission: rehashing the beating of our opponents into submission. It should come as no surprise to those who observe the way the world works that we could very easily be planning to get together in celebration of nothing at all. If life teaches no other lesson, it teaches us that the line between success and failure, between victory and defeat, between the Greatest and the Stupidest is preciously thin. At the time when Pat King’s email was making the rounds of cyberspace it had been 20 years since an event that no one has ever celebrated, an event that mercifully faded into obscurity just when it seemed to be poised to become the most embarrassing moment in the history of a sport whose history would not be written for another 18 years or so.

To set the scene, the fall of 1985 saw the rise of the Chicago Bears, as one dimensional a team as ever there was. Behind a dominating defense, they charged to a title with a marginally talented quarterback and a behemoth of a man running the ball in goal line situations. Somewhere along the way they recorded the Super Bowl Shuffle, and the world learned that their meager offensive skills were in no way supplemented by artistic talent.

During that same fall, KABOOM!, another marginally talented team, finished a surprising second at the UPA Nationals, losing in the finals 21-19 to a significantly better Flying Circus squad. Over the following year those two seemingly unrelated events would come together to bring about another event that almost humiliated an entire team into early retirement, and indirectly gave rise to The Greatest Team In The History Of The Game.

In the spring of 1986, northeast colleges graduated a bevy of talented ultimate players with family ties in and around New York. For reasons that can only be guessed at, upon returning home they opted to form a new team, Spot, rather than join the established area powerhouse, KABOOM!. The folly of their choice soon became evident when they won that year’s Easterns (at the time a very prestigious tournament) while KABOOM! went down in a fiery quarterfinal crash. With Titanic a perennial juggernaut out of Boston and Spot threatening to become the top dog in New York, you would have thought the members of KABOOM! had reason to be worried. After all, this was before the introduction of wildcards, and there were only two spots available for those three teams. But the gap between how talented the members of KABOOM! were and how talented they thought themselves to be was a veritable chasm, and just when they needed to assiduously apply themselves to the task of preparing for that fall’s regional championships, they opted instead to do as the Bears had done before them. Yes, when confronted with the very real possibility that they might not even qualify for 1986 Nationals, KABOOM! recorded The National Shuffle. How’s that for hubris?

Liz Queler is a singer, songwriter, and musician who is talented enough to make a living at it, but back in 1986 she was an ultimate player who foolishly pledged her support to the misguided musical efforts of some fellow players. If she remembers it at all, it is probably when she wakes in a cold sweat from a nightmare episode of This is Your Life, with the entire professional music community learning with dismay that she once sang backup on The National Shuffle.

Patrick King is perhaps the most musically gifted corporate attorney you’ll ever meet, and one of the smartest people I know, so it was surely a low point when he hatched the brainchild that would become The National Shuffle. Still, we gleefully followed along. With Pat leading the way, and Liz providing talent, support, and a 4 track tape recorder, The National Shuffle was born.

As I remember it, Liz manned the equipment and Pat acted as what must have been passing for a producer, even going so far as to pound our more rhythmically challenged teammates on the back in time to the beat so that their portions of the song had at least some semblance of rhythm. In the meantime, I sat close by frantically writing and re-writing lyrics that were being recorded mere moments after I had penned them. At no time do I remember thinking that perhaps our actions might be seen as foolhardy. For reasons I can’t possibly understand, we were so sure of our imminent success at regionals and subsequent trip to Nationals in Texas that we even went so far as to give ourselves stupid “cowboy” nicknames. And you thought buying a plane ticket was bad?

That fall’s regional tournament was held on the Purchase College campus in Purchase, New York. Titanic and KABOOM! met in the winners final with Spot patiently waiting to take on the loser for the second spot to Nationals. As I mentioned previously, there were no wildcards at this time. There also were no games to 15 or ninety minute time caps. In fact, battles between top teams often stretched into multi-hour affairs that were more wars of attrition than displays of ultimate prowess, and this one was no exception. KABOOM! received the pull with the game tied at 21, double game point. Five turnovers later Titanic punched it in for the epic win.

We had the disc to win three times, but we couldn’t close the deal. Now we had to face a younger, more athletic, more talented team that had been watching us kill ourselves for the last hour of the game. Our front line players were exhausted, and our subs were largely untested. Oh yeah, and we had stupid cowboy nicknames and had recorded The National Shuffle.

A combination Spot victory and KABOOM! humiliation seemed inevitable. In fact, had someone been taking action on the game, I doubt anyone would have bet on us, least of all us. We knew better than that, although we hadn’t known better than to record that stupid song. But a funny thing happened to Spot on the way to their first Nationals appearance; they forgot to show up.

In a game whose outcome still has me scratching my head twenty years later, the fresher, younger, more talented Spot team lost to a demoralized and exhausted KABOOM! team 19-12. Why? Is it because we were motivated by the fear of the lifelong humiliation we would suffer when word of The National Shuffle got out? Maybe. Who knows? But what I do know is that if Spot had won that game the ultimate landscape in New York would have been dramatically different the following winter. With an Easterns victory and a Nationals semi-final or final appearance in their first year (we can assume they would have done at least as well as we did), would Spot have had any motivation to entertain the idea of a merger with KABOOM!? It doesn’t seem likely, and it therefore doesn’t seem likely that the dynasty that would become the Evil Empire would have been brought to life in a dingy bar later that year. And if there were no New York in 1987, what would have happened at Nationals that year and what would that have meant to the players in Boston? I guess we’ll never know, and we have The National Shuffle to thank for that. Our egos were just too big to realize how foolish it was to record that song, and our pride too overwhelming to allow us to lose once we had done so.

Perhaps that’s the problem with those guys in California. Maybe they just don’t have pride enough to back up their egos. Then again, all they did was buy plane tickets. Big deal.

Not Pretty

For those who have never enjoyed the experience, perhaps the most appropriate way I can describe having a catheter inserted is that it gives a whole new meaning to the expression “going in through the out door.” That and it hurts an awful lot. For me the procedure took place in the emergency room of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, with my brother and a former teammate, Kevin Granath, waiting nearby. To hear them tell the story, they were listening to a doctor give them various details of my injury, prognosis, and the immediate plans for my admittance when, from behind a curtain, they heard a terrifying scream in a voice they knew was mine. Instinctively they turned their heads only to have the doctor admonish them. “Don’t look. It isn’t pretty.”

Fast forward two weeks. My blood count has stabilized allowing me to keep my kidney, my stay in the hospital is drawing to a merciful close, and it’s time to have said catheter taken out. Remembering what it had felt like going in, I’m not exactly looking forward to the procedure. Then in walks an angel.

I’m sure you can imagine the number of nurses one is likely to see over the course of a two week stay in a hospital. Considering my stay began in intensive care and I spent the first few days scared out of my wits, it’s certainly plausible that I don’t even remember half the people in whose charge I had been, but I would have remembered this one. She was beautiful, with an easy smile, dark brown eyes, and a soothing voice that, like a warm bath, seemed to melt all my concerns away. She moved with a practiced assurance that was professional without being insensitive, and almost before I knew what was happening she had done what she came to do. All I felt was a brief tingling sensation. She even cleaned me up with a quick sponge bath for good measure. I remember noticing at the time that her eyes had never left mine, a fact I found astonishing considering the task she was engaged in. As I have reflected on the moment, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps the catheter removal procedure is not all that challenging, and that, given the occasion, she probably could have done it with her eyes closed. Still, at the time it struck me as remarkable, and only added to her allure. That was 1984, and I still remember her name: Danielle Turri. Imagine that. I can still name and readily describe a woman whose only connection to me was that she pulled a tube out of my penis twenty-two years ago. Men are truly bizarre creatures.

What followed was three months of bed rest, a period when, through the courtesy of the creatively challenged programming geniuses at WPIX-11, I saw every episode of The Odd Couple, Star Trek and The Twilight Zone several times over. It’s also when my father sat at the foot of my bed for a heart-to-heart for the last time.

It was soon after I had come home, and I guess he just wanted to make sure he understood what had happened. Not being one to beat around the bush, he got right to it.
“So that’s it for this Frisbee game, right?” When I replied that it most certainly was not it, and that as soon as I could I expected to be back on the field, he got very quiet. It was the kind of quiet we had all come to recognize over the years, a quiet that was always followed by something that, like my catheter insertion, wouldn’t be pretty. One time in particular such a quiet was followed by him hurling a glass ashtray against the tile wall in the kitchen. You might say my father’s temper is volcanic. On this day, however, his response was quiet, frighteningly so, and all the more effective for it. “Just so you understand, I will never come see you in the hospital again.”

If I had looked at the situation from his perspective, I might not have been so shocked. Although I took the injury in stride, the truth is I could easily have died. In fact, had the tournament taken place farther away from New York or Pat King’s father not been there to diagnose it, I almost certainly would have gotten into a car for the road trip home and bled to death internally on the way. Talk about a buzz kill. Surely somewhere deep inside my father’s emotion concealing titanium shell he had an inkling that he might have lost his youngest child, and it scared him. But there’s more to it than that.

Sent to military school at the age of eight, my father had spent his entire youth being forced to participate in sports for which he had no particular passion or aptitude. His boxing “career” is emblematic of what athletic activity meant to him. He fought 14 times, lost every bout, and was left with a nose that has been broken many times and looks it. It’s hard enough for people who enjoy mainstream sports to understand the mindless dedication of the ultimate athlete. But for my father, a man who sees little point in sports of any kind, it was truly impossible to understand why, having dodged a nearly fatal bullet, I would go back out and chase a piece of plastic around. Looking back now, I can’t really blame him.

At the time of course I had none of the understanding that comes with the wisdom of experience and maturity. I also didn’t believe him. Shows what I know. Just over a year later I blew my ACL in the semis at nationals, and was again admitted to the hospital following a tournament. This time it was Lenox Hill, on the east side of Manhattan, and this being in the dark ages before arthroscopy was widely practiced, an ACL reconstruction required a stay of a few days. True to his word, my father never came by, not even when, as a result of an infection, my stay was extended long enough to include my birthday.

So it came to pass that when I celebrated my 24th birthday in Lenox Hill Hospital my father was not in attendance, although Dan Weiss was. Having helped guide his Flying Circus team to a 21-19 victory over us in the finals, Dan had come to New York to see family. In a move that shows the kind of class Dan has in abundance, he stopped by the hospital to wish me well. My memory of the event is a little hazy thanks to the morphine, but it was the tail end of the party, and I seem to remember Dan hesitating when offered some birthday cake. It was an ice cream cake, and after a short time in a small hospital room filled with people, it had melted into a sweet, gelatinous mass that, like my father’s temper and my catheter insertion, wasn’t pretty.

Be Positive

From my room at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan, I could, if I craned my neck, see the lights of George Washington Bridge. Of course, bleeding internally and with a catheter inserted, craning my neck was more than a bit of a challenge. Still, I did it, and even now I'm not sure why.

As bridges go, the GWB is an engineering marvel and probably the most travelled of the Manhattan bridges, but it pales when compared to either the Brooklyn or Queensboro bridges for aesthetic beauty. But on a cool, crisp fall night in September of 1984, the GWB was all I had. Waiting to hear if the freak injury I had suffered earlier that day would cause me to lose a kidney and thereby end my playing days, I think seeing the bridge gave me hope. The twinkling lights seemed to draw my eyes across the Hudson to New Jersey, and though I had never then and still haven't ever thought of reaching New Jersey as an especially significant accomplishment, on this night the idea did seem inspiring. When my doctor visited me later that evening to tell me the news, he chuckled at my bed-ridden calisthenics. Though I returned a half-hearted smile, I was terrified.

As Doctors are wont to do, he said little and committed to nothing, telling me that it was basically a wait and see game. If my internal bleeding slowed by noon the next day, he'd let nature take its course, in essence allowing the kidney to heal itself. If not, he'd remove it surgically. In answer to my query about surgical repair of the organ, he again chuckled, explaining that trying to repair the fibrous tissue of a kidney would be like trying to sew closed the holes in a block of Swiss cheese. Making his way to the door, he made one more mention of my blood count and its need to stabilize. Nervous, alone and scared beyond measure, I asked a question so preposterous that even twenty some years later I cringe in embarrassment at the recollection. I asked him my blood type, explaining that I had never known what it was. He called the answer over his shoulder as he stepped through the door, and the answer seemd to hang in the air long after he was gone. B+ is what he said.

Shortly after that I called home. It was after midnight, and my father answered. I explained the situation, repeating what the doctor had said, and he asked how I was in a groggy, sleepy voice. I lied, saying I was fine. I felt no better after the call. I'm not sure what I expected my father to say to give me comfort the doctor himself hadn't been able to provide, but I lay there thinking that surely there had to be some reason to feel good. That's when I heard the echo of the doctor's last words: B+. B positive. Be positive. Somehow, in that fearful moment in that darkened room in that old hospital with no one there to provide solace, I found what I was looking for in a play on the words associated with my blood type. Such is the desperation of the injured who've been told by the best medical personnel available that there's nothing much they can do but wait and see. Be positive. Follow the lights of the George Washington Bridge to northern New Jersey. Gaze beyond the bridge to see the outline of the cliffs of the Palisades against the dark but sparkling water of the Hudson. Close your eyes and try to sleep, knowing you'll wake to one of two possible futures. I think back to that night and marvel not at how different my life might have been, but at how little I understood the significance of the moment. With the vaguely contented mind of a simpleton who smiles at a joke that is far beyond his powers of perception, I drifted off to a remarkably good night's sleep secure in the comfort provided by the misinterpreted words of a fatalistic physician. Be positive.

And I was.

Three Stitches in Time, Then Nine

The first true game of ultimate, with seven players to a side, that I ever played took place on the Sheep Meadow in New York's Central Park in the late 70's. Prior to that day my experience with the game was confined to three on three affairs played on a patch of Central Park dirt near West 93rd Street, the "field" defined by a an asphalt path on one side, a stand of trees on the other, and imaginary lines between lampposts at the ends. It was there that I first learned the thrill of out-jumping a taller player for a goal, or sprinting the length of the field to haul in another of my brother's beautiful throws. So when he announced one day that we were going to the Meadow to play a real game on a full size field, I was thrilled.

I realize now that what we were going to was a pick-up game, the kind of loosely organized, all are welcome event that I wouldn't bother with now on a bet. But back then, to me at least, it couldn't have been more exciting if it were being played between nationally ranked teams in a stadium packed with fans. Such is the folly of youthful exuberance.

It has been close to thirty years, so the details are hazy at best. In fact, all I really remember is that Andy Borinstein was there, and the first point I played was on offense. I use the term point rather liberally, because in truth I only "played" for about fifteen seconds, a period of time I spent sprinting around aimlessly at full speed. The field was unimaginably huge, and with no asphalt, lampposts or trees to guide me, I had no idea where to run. But run I did, as fast as I could and with no discernible purpose, right up until the point when I ran headlong into another player.

I note with some amusement that to this day I not only have no idea who the other player was, I don't even know if we were on the same team. I might have figured it out once I got my wits about me, but by then a crimson runnel was already flowing from my face. I made my way off the field awkwardly, bent at the waist and cupping handfuls of blood away from me so as to keep from staining my shirt. Once on the sideline I was relieved to see Brian coming off the field to check on me, knowing full well that my older brother would take care of me. In all fairness, he did place a reassuring hand on my shoulder as he examined the gash I had bitten through the left side of my upper lip on impact, but I'll never forget what he said next: "It's not too bad. You can make it home on your own, can't you?" Before I could answer, he was back in the game.

That was the day I learned the two most fundamental truths about ultimate. First, once you've learned the game, it doesn't take long for you to place it above family in order of importance. Second, it is a non-contact sport in name only.

Brian was right; I was able to make it home on my own. After cleaning up at a water fountain and being given some tissues by a kind stranger, I rode the M10 bus twenty blocks up Central Park West to our apartment building, then stopped in at the 14th floor office of Doctor Nora Gottschalk, a kind old German doctor whose family practice was located two floors below our family's apartment. She put three stitches in my upper lip and sent me home with the first of many scars I would receive over a nearly thirty-year career in the game.

In a strange twist of fate, Dr. Gottschalk would die senselessly some years later, run down by an M10 bus while crossing the street.

Over the years I would continue to bleed for the game, both internally and externally. In the fall of '84, I split my kidney colliding with Paul Sayles(?) after making a layout block on a Kevin Cande hammer at yet another meaningless Purchase tournament. The incident earned Paul the moniker "Trog-Buster" from his Static Disc teammates, and it earned me a trip to the emergency room of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, where I might well have died from internal bleeding if not for the intervention of one Dr. Thomas King, famous father to the even more famous ultimate legend, Pat.

An amusing side note: Pat's father loved the game and often went to tournaments, both big and small. At '86 Nationals in Houston, Matt Jefferson suffered a dislocated shoulder. Accompanied by Dr. King to the nearest emergency room, Matty J was seen by a physician who had stopped reading Dr. King's book to attend to him.

Yet another amusing side note: While many believed that Matty J had suffered the injury while playing, he had actually suffered it the night before in an elevator at the hotel when a drunk and belligerent Nob Rauch, angry because Matty was wearing an opponent's t-shirt, grabbed him by the arm and threw him to the floor. Those truly were the days.

We played the following nationals without Matty (can you blame him?), but Nob still drank and I still bled. In a pool play game against Windy City, I ran down and caught a lead pass from Dan Weiss just before Ironman, on a futile poach block attempt, crashed into me head first. Fortunately for me, I had enough time to turn my head slightly. Unfortunately for Iron, he didn't. He came up from the ground with blood pouring from a gash that was rumored to take more than a hundred stitches to close (hence why he's not called Ironhead). I stayed in the game, threw a score, then walked off the field with a strange feeling of moist warmth running down my neck. Seems I had completed the point oblivious to the fact that my ear had been torn, an injury whose nine stitch remedy was, like me, paltry compared to Ironman.

Watching video of the collision later, I was struck not by the blow but by the sound it made, a hard, hollow, and sickeningly wet sound, like two coconuts colliding at high speed with a thick raw steak between them. Exquisite.

I played semis and finals the next day with a bandage wrapped around my head, looking like the fife player from the Archibald M. Willard painting, The Spirit of '76. Pat, in sympathy, wrapped his head in an (almost) equally bizarre manner. We won nationals for the first time that day, but for many years before and many years since, I've been bleeding.

Melancholia

I've had a piece percolating for days now, and I had expected it to be ready this weekend. It was only a matter of sitting down and pouring it out. In my mind, it had everything: pathos, ethos and logos. It would cover my most recent experiences at regionals and how an inadvertent collision had resulted in a gash to my upper lip, a gash so reminiscent of one I suffered the first time I ever played that it bookended my career perfectly. That piece will have to wait. Curtis Wagner died, and a piece of me died too.

I can't say I knew Curtis well, because I didn't. We were teammates only briefly, and I expect we actually lined up on opposite sides of the field more than we did on the same side. I knew precious little about him personally, although I knew enough to think that his girlfriend and he were a perfect fit. Little surprise that they remained together all these years.

Of all of us on New York, Dave Mathison knew him best. He has written a marvelous memory that you may wish to peruse, although you do so at your own peril. It is that memory that has sparked the fires of my melancholia, and has me wondering what the hell happened. I'm sure my feelings are so familiar that they exceed even the most stereotypical crises of middle age in banality, and yet, because they're my own and unfamiliar to me, they sting deeply. Curtis Wagner died. He has been absent from my life for close to twenty years, so his loss is not one I should feel so deeply, and I suppose in truth I don't. What I feel, what cuts me so is what his death means. I look at a picture of us after our first nationals victory. We were so young, so bold, so confident. We believed in ourselves, in our greatness, in our invincibility. Over the years, whenever I've seen that picture, I still believed. But today, with Curtis gone, I saw it differently. Like a man who looks in a mirror and for the first time sees what he truly is and not what he used to be, I feel old. More to the point, I feel lost.

Several years ago, I embarked on an extensive renovation of my three-bedroom ranch house here in Garner, NC. Renovation doesn't even describe it. I completely gutted the place down to the frame and rebuilt it. The task compelled me to learn an entirely new set of skills and took far longer than I ever imagined it could, but eventually I managed to (almost) finish it. So now I live in a home that is light years removed from my old one. The differences are too many to recount, but the one that strikes me today is the loss of memories. Gone are the photos of old friends from New York. Gone is the picture of Pat, Blair and Crib from the post-game celebration of that first title in Miami, glowing with the satisfaction of accomplishment. Gone is the photo of Davey-Dave Mathison and me arm in arm, smiling broadly, standing in front of the scoreboard from the semifinals of Worlds the following summer, when our late game blocks had brought us back from the brink of disastrous defeat. Our smiles suggest we had it all along. We were young. We were bold. We were confident. We were full of ourselves, and something else to boot. But what ties those photos and all the others from that time together is the very thing that made us, makes all great teams, successful. We were one. No, we weren't best friends and we didn't always know each other that well off the field, but we were one between the lines.

Oneness. That oneness is what prompted me to put those photos up the day I moved into this house in December of 1998, even though the events they depicted were ten years gone by. Although I didn't know it then, the loss of that oneness is what allowed me to so easily take them down and pack them away when I began the renovation some years later. They remain in that box, in storage in my attic. Physically, they are a few yards away. Figuratively, the distance is considerably greater. Dave Mathison posted the group photo from nationals with his poignant memory of Curtis. I hadn't seen it in years. We were so young, so confident, so bold. We were one. Now one of us is gone. Some day, perhaps some day soon, there will be another. What will I feel that day? Will I be able to feel at all? Tomorrow is promised to no one. Nor is oneness.

Dave Mathison wrote that Curtis' passing makes him feel like going out and playing again. I have no such feelings. Instead, I want to go up into my attic and open up a box. I know I'll find some old pictures in there. I'm hoping to find something else as well.

One More Time (Part III)

Saturday morning of the first tournament I've attended since Potlach more than three years ago (has it really been that long?), and who's the first person I see? Parinella. In truth I had actually seen him almost as soon as we got in the car, riding along next to us with his wife and child in the back. At some point he made a right and we went straight. Someone in the car (probably Bliss) suggested I follow him. I said nothing but went straight. Like I would ever follow Parinella.

So we got lost again and tried to call our teammates to no avail. But we did get Mick from Ring on the line, and although he was on a platform in NC waiting to catch a train he did offer some advice to help us get to the fields: "Keep going." Who said those Ring boys were a bunch of dummies? At some point we made a right (as in correct) turn and got to the fields just late enough to miss the pre-game drills but not so late as to cause a stir (in other words, right on time). We played a team in red with a name that might have included the word "tofu" but I can't be sure. Then we played a team in white named Luggage or Attache. They had a couple of guys named Scooter and Biff, and a girl named Brandi or Candi or Mandi or Sandi. They were better than the Tofu team, but we beat them too. And then things started to get weird.

The next team had names on their jerseys. The girls had names like Randy and Chesty and Eager while the guys had names like Grumpy and Flaccid and Incontinent. Before the game their captain asked if he could flip with me, as though it meant something to him. I declined. I think his name was Doofus. Then we started to play the game and they started beating us. At first it was just a little beating, like getting spanked by your dad when his heart isn't really in it. But pretty soon it was more like inmates during a prison riot taking advantage of the table turn by getting a 25 to life's worth of licks in on an especially sadistic prison guard. At some point we called timeout, and I suggested a change in strategy only to be shot down unceremoniously by a guy 20 years my junior. It was an odd feeling, having some know nothing out of nowhere cut me off and dismiss my input as though I had just stepped out of a Chevy Impala with a hamstring injury and no significant wins in the past 12 years. Stranger still was what happened after we stepped back on the field with the time honored admonition to "play harder" still ringing in our years. We got humiliated, with no fewer than eight people, including the Huddle Hun himself, dropping passes that hit them right in the hands. We lost by a bunch which meant we had to wait two hours to play a pre-quarter. Oh joy. So Bliss has the brilliant idea to go get some lunch and coffee and I figure that sounds great so I grab my bag and as I'm walking to the car I watch her back out and pull away.

Is there anything more heinous than a two hour bye on a cold, windy field when you could be having a nice lunch and drinking coffee but instead you're eating a cold sandwich on soggy bread sold to you by a clarinet playing kid with acne raising money for his high school band? And all the while you're asking yourself "What the hell was I thinking?"

So, the pre-quarter is against the Annapolis All-Stars, (as if there were enough quality players in Annapolis that they could actually field a team of all-stars) and by then the wind had really picked up. Our field for this one was upwind/downwind, which had an old, slow guy like me figuring I'd get some minutes because, well, wind tends to make throwing more important than running. Little did I know I'd get almost all my minutes on a single point.

It was early, and the all-stars had already notched one upwinder to give them an early lead, so we were trying to answer back with an upwinder of our own. Trouble is we were flat, and the deer-in-the-headlights look that had accompanied the flurry of pathetic drops in our previous game was popping up all over the place. The prospect of playing for ninth place was starting to look very likely, and I felt certain I'd be getting very drunk very soon. And then we played the point.

An accurate count is not available, but I'll bet there were 24 turnovers PER TEAM. We were looking to throw enough short passes to get a good look deep, and then heaving it into the by now howling wind and hoping for the best, so it wasn't surprising that we were turning it over. I have no idea what the "all-stars" were doing. I mean, they were going downwind for chrissakes. Fortunately for us they couldn't convert any of their two dozen chances, and with most of us ready to start puking or feign injury, Alan Hoyle launched one last prayer that I managed to chase down for the score. And while it's rare in ultimate that you can point to a single goal scored (other than the final one) and say it decided the game, this one surely did. We rode it and the subsequent momentum to a comfortable win, and the fall-stars moved on to dominate the 9th place bracket (or at least I hope so for their sake). But before we file this game away, let me tell you a little story.

Annapolis going upwind and some dude fires a forehand to YoYo streaking (or as close to streaking as she gets while clothed). As a group that includes YoYo, her defender and a few others gathers under the pass that is now floating about midfield, I watch an Annapolis guy sprint from near where I'm standing on the sideline a good 25-30 yards, take a running leap, and hurl himself into the group at close to full speed. The play was utterly reckless, totally dangerous, and sent the two women in the group crashing to the ground. As YoYo calls foul, I hear an Annapolis player (who coincidentally is YoYo's boyfriend) cry out from the sideline, "nice bid!" Can you believe it? Nice bid? Later on the same point, the same guy attempts to get a poach block by laying out into the path of our own Princess Liz Mahanna, clipping her in the side of the knee and sending her limping to the sidelines. Questioned about the wisdom of playing so recklessly, Mr. Nice Bid replied, "I didn't see her," a fact which surprised no one since it was clear he hadn't looked.

As a former club player known for hurling his body around on a regular basis, I make a conscious effort to tone it down when playing mixed gender ultimate. You simply have to. In most instances, men weigh more, run faster, and are stronger than the women we're sharing the field with. It is incumbent upon us to play responsibly and let certain plays go because to do otherwise is to risk causing a potentially serious injury. Ultimate is non-contact, but we all know unintentional collisions happen all the time, and their unintended consequences can be devastating. As a member of the Raleigh Llama at '99 Nationals, I watched a teammate get carted off the finals field in an ambulance unconscious as a result of a play that couldn't have been avoided. It was terrifying, but that shit happens. What shouldn't happen is people who ought to know better putting others at risk making "nice bids" that are anything but.

So, the scare with Princess aside, the day ended well, and for the first time I was actually starting to enjoy my farewell tour. We packed up our bags, and I actually found myself eagerly anticipating spending an hour or two at the fields, drinking free beer and chatting amiably with Jim, the Count, O'Dowd, and the rest of the dozen or so people at the tournament I actually knew. Sadly, it was not to be. In my time away from the game things have really changed. Today's player does precious little partying, and rarely does one get a whiff of kind bud while walking the fields during a bye. While I was ready to treat the tournament as a cocktail party, pressing the flesh while I sipped the suds, my teammates couldn't wait to pile into the cars and get back to the hotel. So, in a moment that suggested that perhaps the world had shifted on its axis, I found myself reluctantly leaving a frisbee party, and lamenting the loss of an opportunity to spend a few more minutes chatting with Alex DeFrondeville. Yes, my farewell tour had finally begun to be enjoyable, and in so doing had taken me into some truly uncharted waters. I left the fields glancing wistfully over my shoulder at the gathering of players huddled around the keg, the Count clearly identifiable among them. Somewhere, Blair O'Connor must have felt a strange and inexplicable stinging sensation.

One More Time (continued)

At one point in my young life my family moved every couple of years, a natural byproduct of my father's employment in network television news, a field where climbing the ladder generally means being sent from one miserable assignment to the next, ostensibly to hone your skills but more likely to see if you've got the stomach for what is surely one of the harshest careers out there. One such move landed us in Highland Park, Illinois, a place that is, like Naperville, a suburb of Chicago. I don't remember all that much about Highland Park. We lived on Summit Avenue, my best friends were Joey Bernardi and Herman Moriano (both from the wrong side of the tracks town of Highwood), and somewhere across those tracks was an abandoned house that, in my memory, had an inexhaustible supply of windows to break with rocks. Yet even those meager memories, dim and distant as they are, are a heck of a lot more compelling than anything the current town of Napervile has to offer.

I have now been to Naperville at least a half dozen times, and I can not name a single distinguishing feature or identifiable landmark. In fact, so indistinguishable is Naperville's seemingly endless succession of strip malls from those encountered in any other sprawlurb I've ever visited that it is entirely possible that, like the Apollo 11 astronauts, I've never actually made the trip. And while the thought of being the victim of such a hoax might be galling to some, when confronted with the possibility that I have never actually seen the real Naperville I can only say, would that it were so. But no, I have been there, not once but twice thrice, and like Native Americans who believed that still pictures took a piece of their souls along with the image, I feel somehow lessened for the experience. And though it's true that the time spent in that vacuous void is a chunk of my life I'll never get back, I can temper the pain of that realization somewhat by vowing never to return. So it is perhaps the first positive development in the farewell tour of glory gone awry that I can safely say that although a poor decision made in haste has forestalled my farewell to ultimate, a wise decision made with certainty has precipitated my farewell to Naperville, and not a moment too soon. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

When last we left off I was lugging Bliss' bag around while she tried in vain to lead us from the Midway Airport reantal counter to our car. To say that Bliss is directionally challenged is putting it mildly, and circumstances are not improved by another of her odd little quirks, an inability (or unwillingness) to listen to, hear, or remember spoken directions when they're given to her. Add to that her refusal to even look at a map, insistence on sitting in the co-pilot's seat, and the delight she takes in pointing out every wrong turn the driver makes, and you begin to get a picture of what I was in for as I settled into the driver's seat of our rented Chevy Impala for the drive to Naperville. Oh yeah, and I wasn't wearing my contacts, which means I couldn't read a sign until I was so close as to render its information useless. Like I said, good times.

Remarkably, finding the hotel was really quite easy, after I had made no fewer than three wrong turns within a mile of the airport, each met with a smugly satisfied "Good job" from my altogether useless co-pilot. We pulled into the Holiday Inn sometime after midnight, and the parking lot was crawling with ulti players tossing the bee. I parked as far away as I possibly could and entered through the side door. Then came the best part about playing coed, and what is at least for now the absolute high point of my farewell tour; I was sharing a room with three women. How cool is that?

Before you let your minds run away with you, let me make it clear that this is not about hooking up. Rooming with women means the room smells nicer, stays cleaner, and every waking moment won't be accompanied by the SportsCenter soundtrack. It also means that someone will probably bring you coffee in the morning, and when you're winding down in the evening by doing some quiet reading, there's a good chance someone will be doing something craftsy across the room. In truth, it's not like being at an ultimate tournament at all, except for two telling factors.

First, there's still a good chance that your restful night's slumber will be all but ruined by snoring so loud you'd swear it came out of a 300 pound longshoreman. Second, you still need to get into the bathroom first or not at all after breakfast. Wives and girlfriends swear their husbands and boyfriends to secrecy on this one, but seeing as how I'm neither I can tell you without equivocation that women lie, and their shit really doesn't smell like flowers.

One More Time

A few years back (probably more than a few, really) I hit upon the idea of having my own farewell tour to ultimate, something like what Kareem did but without the rocking chairs, cars, and thousands of adoring fans. My plan was to hand pick the tournaments and teams, and enjoy a leisurely, long goodbye to the sport to which I have given so much of my life. At the time I think I might have even scratched out a short list of events on the back of an envelope, a list which no doubt included such Northeast classics as Hingham and Clambake, the Mid-summer bash they call Potlach, and perhaps even mentioned Poultry Days. If memory serves, at some point I revealed the most important element of my farewell tour plan to former WSW'er Corey Sanford in an email. That most important element, an element that is critical to all retirements on the planet, is timing. How do you know when it's time to walk away? For me it was easy. I wouldn't leave on top, nor would I leave after dragging my aging carcass around at Open Nationals in one last, vain attempt at recapturing glory. No, I would leave after spending a year trotting around at a series of primarily coed and singularly entertaining events while wearing my age on my jersey. In other words, I would leave at the end of 2006.

Well, that was the plan, and at least a few elements of the plan worked out. First, and most importantly, I lived to see my forty-fourth year. Second, I remain healthy enough to at least play at playing in a somewhat reasonable facsimile of what accomplished players do. Finally, I have taken enough time off recently that I am not so sick of the game that the thought of going to a tournament makes me want to vomit. So what happened? How did my farewell tour of glory turn into my worst nightmare? Well, the truth is I'm still trying to piece together all the details, but I'm pretty sure it was my sister-in-law's fault, that she and my brother were co-conspirators, and that the whole thing was pretty much doomed from the get go.

For starters, the tour began at Winter League, when Bliss' half-baked plan to get me on her team instead landed me on the GeeWhizMan's roster. For a brief snippet of the special brand of misery that experience entailed look no further than the story of Sausage Boy and the Travel Callers. I suppose I should have known then that things would get worse before they got better, but what could I do? Cut and Run?

The next stop on the tour was Cape Fear Spring League (like I said, from bad to worse). Although things looked promising when I was picked by the legendary Tully Beatty, I soon realized that every other captain at the draft must have been on crack. Beatty managed to get a team that included me, Mike and Amy Gerics, Leah Rehill, Kevin Rhodes, and about 27 other people. Which meant that my two hour drive to games usually netted me about 8 points of a blowout victory over a bunch of guys who drink better than they play (and don't do either particularly well). I would call the whole thing a complete washout if it weren't for a blast from the past, Ben Baldwin.

I had the opportunity to coach Ben when he played for the SUNY Purchase Atomic Dogs in '89-90. Ben was a hard runner and very enthusiastic, but his forehand lacked touch. Still, he is most remembered for having to sit out a big spring break tourney in Wilmington because he had his flick finger smashed in a hotel room door by a teammate who took exception to Ben peeping in on him and his girlfriend. Sixteen years later, Ben's flick still lacks touch. I did not, however, ask about his hotel habits.

So there I was, two tourneys into the farewell tour of glory, and what did I have to show for it? GeeWhiz and Peeping Ben. How the mighty had fallen. Undaunted, I signed on to play next with a newly formed and as yet unnamed coed team in the Carolina Kudzu Classic (an event which employs a rather liberal definition of the term classic). We matched up in the semis with a combination Backhoe/Ring squad that was certain to pummel us, an outcome made all the more enticing by the delightful weather and the bottle of Maker's in my cooler. Just when it seemed the farewell tour was about to hit stride, one of my many turnovers was greeted by the overzealous heckling of one TJ Cawley. I say overzealous not because he was loud, obnoxious, or even funny. No, I say overzealous because he violated the prime directive of heckling; he was serious. Later, after the game, he confided that the reason he finds my turnovers so appalling is that he came into the game looking up to me but he can't abide the sheer volume of turnovers I produce. He earnestly explained that I could give so much back to the game if I would just play a more conservative game, the kind of game he plays. Did I mention his name is TJ? 'Nuff said.

Three events, three disasters, and with no money in the bank to sport a ticket to Potlach or the gas for Poultry Days, no reasonable expectation for things to get better. And with Bliss cajoling me to sign on for the fall, and that little voice inside my head saying, "You must be out of your effing mind," I made the fatal mistake. I signed on for the fall.

Which brings me to the second Friday in September at Midway Airport in Chicago where earnest, young ultimate athletes are tossing the bee at baggage claim and I am fighting a profound urge to launch my lunch. It's nearing midnight, we're waiting on bags, teammates, and a rental car. We have a room somewhere but no directions to it, and my sister-in-law, who is to blame for it all, has a bag the size of a small car packed to bursting with beads and jewelry making apparatus, the better to pass the time between games with. What am I doing here? I'm forty-four years old. More to the point, I'm old enough to know better. What the hell am I doing here?

So I lied. So sue me.

Yes, I lied. I said I would post during the summer, but I didn't. And now the summer is gone, school is back in session, and I'm back to working like a dog. (Although truthfully, my dog never seems to do much other than sleep and eat. In fact, he's sleeping at my feet right now.)

At some point somewhere back in the distance, someone (is that vague enough for you?) mentioned that I should write more about my experiences as a teacher. In fact, I have done so on many occasions for the Raleigh News and Observer. One of them can be found here, and by clicking on the offerings in the right margin you can see a few more. If you prefer to listen to similar pieces I've done for our local NPR affiliate, you can find them here. I'm rather partial to the Mule Days piece, and the one on the Dress Code has a certain quality, but in truth they all pale in comparison to the real thing. I don't mean Coca-Cola, of course, but classroom teaching. If you've never done it, you can't possibly know what it's like. During my only ultimate podcast (which was lost as the result of severe technical incompetence) a fellow podcaster suggested I should be coaching ultimate. When I replied that I prefer to focus all my energies and talents on teaching, it was suggested that pretty much anybody can do that, but I am "uniquely qualified" to coach ultimate. I still smile when I think about the comment. The truth is that just about any bozo with a PE degree can take the UPA's coaching package and turn two dozen marginally skilled teenagers into a passable high school ultimate team in a fortnight of practices. Classroom teaching is another animal altogether, and I have little doubt that when it comes time for my fellow podcaster's little ones to begin their formal education, he will come to realize the folly of his comment.

I am now 6 days into my fifth year as a high school English teacher at West Johnston High School in Johnston County, North Carolina. While teaching is my primary responsibility (and the only one I am paid for by Johnston County Schools) , I am also the Director of our Freshman Academy, which means that I am in no small way responsible for everything that happens with (or to) our incoming class of freshmen, the class of 2010. As of Friday, that group numbered over 660, and was growing every day. I have learned more about public education in four years than I could ever share, but if there is one, all-important thing I have learned it is this: in public schools, the difference between a great education and a virtually worthless one can be as simple as who is standing in the front of the room. The dearth of available teachers coupled with the phenomenal population growth in our area means that we're pretty much looking for any warm bodies we can find to put in our classrooms. When you add tenure to that equation, you get the regrettable reality that any classroom you walk into might present a marginally qualified long-term substitute, a painfully jaded veteran counting the days to retirement, a wet-behind-the-ears but earnestly eager first year teacher barely staying afloat, or someone like me. If you think that the students in those classrooms are getting the same education, you must be on crack.

So, why do you care? Well, you may not, but those of you who have been patiently waiting for me to begin posting again can blame public education (and my unwavering devotion to it) for my prolonged silence. When I wasn't working full-time in the NCSU Forent Entomology lab over the summer, I was putting in volunteer time at WJHS, trying to get things in order for the upcoming year, a year which is now fully upon us in all its chaotic glory. Now that we're in session, I work 12 hours a day, five days a week, while continuing to put in 30 hours a week at NCSU on nights and weekends. It's a grueling schedule, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I love what I do, and it never feels like work. In fact, I believe it's what I was meant to do. I bring the same passion, intensity, and indomitable spirit that I brought to ultimate into my classroom, although I rarely spike my textbook. Still, when my students look into my eyes I have little doubt that they see the same thing my teammates once did, and what they see helps them to believe in themselves. The funny thing is, for four years they had no idea about my ultimate past, that I was once as passionate about a piece of plastic as I now am about their futures. Of course, that was before ESPN classic.

I first heard about the program from a fellow teacher who called my cell phone. That night a friend called while watching it. Do I need to tell you she was in hysterics? Soon my email inbox was overflowing, and the furor has still not died down. Copies on DVD now regularly make the rounds at school, and hardly a day goes by without someone in the hallway whispering with mock curiosity, "Whatever happened to Kenny Dobyns?" Although several people have promised me a copy, I have yet to see it (I don't have cable), but I expect I'll have a good laugh at my own expense when I do. I deserve to be ridiculed. I was over the top, out of hand, and preposterously self-obsessed. Still, I don't shy away from it. It is an accurate depiction of what I was, of what I felt I had to be in order to be successful. I may have been wrong, but we were successful. And now, all these years later, I'm just as over the top, just as out of hand, and just as obsessed. Thankfully, though, the focus of my efforts is no longer self-aggrandizement nor ultimately hollow victories. Now my opponents are apathy, indifference and ignorance, and while their names might lack the cachet of Windy City, Tsunami, or Titanic, they are significantly more formidable. And although I'll never again hoist a trophy in victory, there are days (quite a few of them actually) when I feel similarly elated, and significantly prouder for the accomplishment.

So, the question stands: Whatever happened to Kenny Dobyns?

He grew up. Finally.

long time no...

Yes, it has been a while. The previous flurry of activity on my blog coincided with my winter break from teaching high school. With our first end-of-year exam scheduled for tomorrow, it won't be long before I will once again be hunched over my keyboard with a bottle of Maker's Mark close at hand, pounding out prose for the proletariat, throwing pearls before swine, at once exasperating and exhilirating any and all with time and the inclination to waste it. My heart's aflutter at the prospect.

And yes, for those of you with whom printing conventions carry undeserved significance, I will endeavor to make more judicious use of the shift key.

Until then.

you can't take it with you

every year's end, the new york times publishes an exhaustive list of all the national champions in just about every sport in the sunday edition that falls closest to new year's day. for all i know this has been going on for many years, but it was not until the the late 80's that i began to take notice, an expansion of my world view that coincided with new york's run of championships that began about the same time. i must admit to some small sense of satisfaction at being included in a publication of such stature, and that the times recognized our accomplishment once a year did, at least for a day, lend us an air of legitimacy that we lacked for the other 364. ultimate was still unrecognized by, and unrecognizable to, just about everyone we knew who didn't play, and therefore we were still the lowly peasants of the sporting world. but we were kings for a day, and that, as they say, beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

one year, however, the times made a decision that had the potential to vault us from obscurity to celebrity (or some facsimile thereof). they decided to run a sidebar in that year's list of champions highlighting the accomplishments of local champions who were all but unknown to the world at large despite being legendary in their respective sports. i have no idea how the decision was made, who was involved, what the connection was or even the year in question, but i still remember, and will so long as my faculties remain with me, which local champion shared the sidebar with us: one wall handball champion joe durso of brooklyn.

researching the sidebar, the writer contacted me and joe and asked us some standard questions. what's it's like to be so successful and totally unknown? do you long for recognition and exposure? the usual fare. i was interviewed first, and i basically said it didn't really bother me because i hadn't gone into ultimate expecting to be famous. interviewed second, durso not only said that he wished for and deserved widespread recognition, he also took a swipe at ultimate by saying something to the effect of "hey, i'm an athlete. i don't play a sport with a limited skillset like frisbee." wouldn't you know the times ran that quote.

when the piece came out, several of my teammates were upset. one in particular, amos himmelstein, was incensed enough to write a strongly worded letter to the paper. i, on the other hand, didn't really care. over the years we were written about quite a bit. some of it was accurate, some of it less so, but none of it ever really made all that much of a difference, and i had long since stopped caring what people thought about us. i put the piece out of my mind, and because i didn't keep a copy, assumed i would never see it again. i was sorely mistaken.

while coaching the suny purchase atomic dogs in 1989 and 1990, i had the pleasure of having one arthur a. aidala on the team. artie was not much of an athlete, and he was most definitely not an ultimate player. what he was, however, was the most highly motivated, coachable, infectiously enthusiastic player i have ever been around, and an instrumental member of the team. he came up with many of our cheers, never got down no matter how little he played, and roamed the sidelines keeping everybody pumped up throughout every game. in fact, he can be seen in the video of the 1989 open national finals game between ny and tsunami, stepping onto the field to congratulate cribber (a former purchase teammate) after a goal.

i liked artie from the start, and in a strange piece of foreshadowing, i knew from the day i met him that we would be friends for many years. we have been. we still are. in fact, whenever i make a return visit to new york these days, i stay with artie. it was on such a visit that artie arranged the encounter that will tie all of these memories together.

it was christmas, and arthur is a social creature, beloved by all who know him in his bay ridge neighborhood, so spending the holidays in his company required me to accompany him as he "made the rounds," as it were. most of the visits took place at delis, pizzerias, restaurants, and many other local establishments arthur has been frequenting for years. the encounters were brief, filled with warm feelings, and evocative of a time that, for those who have not lived their entire lives in the same ten square block area of bay ridge, has all but disappeared. as one who lives in a part of semi-rural north carolina where walking onto a neighbor's property in search of a stray dog once brought me face to muzzle with a loaded gun, i rather enjoyed the experience with arthur. so when he asked if i minded stopping by a friend's apartment, i said no without hesitation.

the apartment was a small, one bedroom affair with a view of new york harbor and the verrazano bridge. while arthur and his friend exchanged hugs and loud, profanity-laced greetings, i looked around. one wall of the living room was covered floor to ceiling with sugar bowls arranged meticulously on a series of mahogany shelves. two other walls were covered with "art photos," framed photographs that, had they not been shot in black and white, would be called pornography. the rest of the living room was a cluttered mix of bric-a-brac of predominantly asian origin with an occasional african piece thrown in. it was while i was panning across the room taking it all in that my eyes landed on a collection of trophies, plaques, medals and laminated newspaper and magazine articles arranged in an alcove that could only be described as a shrine. stepping closer i noticed that all of the trophies were for handball competitions. looking even more closely, i noticed that one of the laminated articles was from the new york times, and that my name appeared in it. arthur's friend was none other than joe durso, the one wall handball champion who had disparaged ultimate as a limited skillset sport in the new york times some ten years earlier.

what followed was a somewhat awkward and altogether surprising series of revelations. although a frequent visitor to joe's apartment, arthur had never looked closely enough at the article to notice my name. because joe held every other athlete on the face of the earth in contempt, he had little recollection of having cast aspersions on me all those years ago, and seemed entirely unremorseful once reminded of it. taking the high road, i assured him i held no grudge whatsoever, but allowed as how he was in serious need of an interior decorator's assistance.

we spent the better part of the evening at joe's, and on subsequent visits i have seen him at arthur's place or out on the town. in the years since the times article was published he has lost none of his bitterness. he still laments his fate as an obscure champion, and sincerely feels that he is in every way deserving of the kind of recognition michael jordan once received, arguing that he is an equally talented athlete. given the slightest provocation, he will haul out and display every article ever written about him. asked about the current crop of handball greats, he sneers that he's better than every one of them. listening to him go on about his past success, the misery of his obscurity, and the unfairness of a world that still refuses to recognize and adequately reward his greatness, i am struck by the futility of his endless quest for respect, and i pity him. imagine being so concerned about what others think that you allow yourself to experience so little lasting joy in what you accomplish. talk about a living hell.

i was reminded of all of this recently when two things occurred, both of them somewhat loosely connected to ultimate and rsd. the first was jeff brown's mention of a prized photograph of him and me in usa today where through some mistake our names were jumbled. the other was a comment made during a podcast where someone suggested that it must be strange for me to teach at a school where no one has any idea about my illustrious frisbee past. it occurred to me then that while joe durso is an extreme case, many champion ultimate players suffer from the same melancholy. in the absence of mainstream acceptance, they cling to scraps of fleeting fame, seek out the company and comfort of those who recognize the significance of their accomplishments, and dream of a day when the world at large will recognize their greatness. i can't say i know of a sugar bowl collecting ultimate player, but i have seen many a shrine to past glory, and i'm quite certain that it wouldn't take much in the way of provocation to bring out the scrapbook, if you know what i mean. i just don't get it.

during our reign, i lived and breathed the game, and i truly believed that was necessary for us to be successful. looking back i'm not so sure, and i am more than a little embarrassed by some of the decisions i made, some of the family events i blew off for tournaments, and the utterly skewed value system i had at the time. but i'm older and wiser now, and while i can't go back and change the decisions i regret, i can be thankful that i've lived long enough to make up for lost time. i have no trophies, and no frisbee pictures adorn my walls. my past glories exist only in my memory, and were it not for a pair of misguided authors, they would have died there with me. i'll pay them back if i get the chance.

it's true that neither students nor faculty at my school have an inkling of who kenny dobyns is. in one of the more bizarre comments i have ever heard, my fellow podcaster said, "but they have no idea who you are." in fact, they know exactly who i am, although they don't know who i was.

so what?

20/20 revision

so, another quarter is heard from, as jeff "dick" brown brings his considerable acumen to bear on the thorny issue of history, or, as he calls it, revisionism. seems jeff was sick and tired of reading what i was writing, so he decided to do something he never does (because he hates rsd) and reveal the truth. and after we had already wasted all that time on lies.

yes, friends, jeff was standing "right there" when it all happened back in 1993, and he was quick to reveal that in truth i struck the first blow (surprise, surprise) and that he thinks i'm a prick (no surprise, no surprise) and that everything that happened to me was warranted because i had started it all. he added a few jabs at our style of play (cheating) and how they were sick of being pushed around (justifiable response to unspirited behavior) so steve didn't back down when i hit him first and jeremy gave me what i had coming when i retaliated at steve for not backing down when i hit him first (yes, the logic does seem to break down a little in that section, but i think by then jeff was in over his head and simply grasping at whatever was out there that might keep him afloat). as a final tip of the hat in the spirit of fair reporting and fair play, jeff allowed that joey deserved every bit of cribber's head butt. what a gracious jeff that dick is.

not that we really need to go over it in too much detail, but jeff is, not surprisingly, totally mistaken. when i pointed that out to him in an email, even detailing the scene when, bleeding from the lip from jeremy's blow, i insisted that steve tell jeremy that he had started it all, jeff had an interesting reaction. "whatever," he wrote, sounding much like the fourteen-year-olds i teach when they discover that they're wrong. he added the question, "so, what? steve whispered it to jeremy or did the whole o line know?" i got the feeling he wasn't really interested in the answer when he added "i just thought it would be nice to say hello, but i was wrong." and not for the first time either.

what i'm still trying to figure out is precisely where in the i'm sick of your revisionist version of events because the truth is you hit him first which makes you a liar and your team a bunch of cheaters communication i was supposed to unearth the "hey. how're you doing?" i've looked several times, but i'm still not sure.

so let's give that horses' carcass a break, but not before we ask one question: if jeff, who was a member of the team and was standing "right there," never heard from moons that he had started it all, then how many of his teammates did moons allow to leave that field believing that he (moons) was guiltless and we (ny) had showed our ugly and evil nature by precipitating a brawl that deprived them (boston) of their right to a good, clean spirited game in which they would surely have been victorious?

while we're pondering that one, let's speculate as to just how joey giampino feels about this latest (jeff's) attempt by a former teammate to throw him under the bus. for years after that ill-fated contest, you couldn't throw a rock at a frisbee party without hitting some member or former member of the boston ultimate scene who was all too eager to blame the whole 1993 debacle on joey and his misguided efforts to bring toughness to beantown. they were, of course, singing a different tune when they beat us at regionals that fall by 7, but we never really did our best cheating until nationals-everyone knows that. still, the treatment joey received courtesy of his former comrades in arms was reminiscent of what happens when, waking up in a haze after a night of heavy drinking, you roll over to discover you're lying next to that not very attractive girl who looked a whole lot better when you were drunk. then, as you begin to slide quietly out of bed to make your getaway, you realize with a start that you're in your own bed.

yes, joey got the "i really have to be going, my nephew's fifth birthday party is today, i have to go to church, my niece's baptism is in an hour, leave your number and i'll call you, yeah it was great, i had fun too whatever your name is, don't bother freshening up, you look great, don't bother waiting for the elevator the stairs are faster, please don't tell anybody where you're coming from on your way out, bye" treatment in a big way. and you always read that boston is such a friendly town.

guess you can't believe everything you read.

so parinella gave me a chuckle when he said that joey teammates' hadn't rushed to joey's defense because he was the instigator with crib. perhaps that's what jim was thinking. lenny, however, had a different reaction, as he jumped in with both horns and insisted that cribber had to be thrown out of the game. never mind that there were no observers, no yellow/red card system, and no precedent for making such a decision. "cribber's gone," he yelled. realizing that in fact crib probably was, for our purposes, gone, i called his bluff.

"fine," i said, but jeremy's gone too." to no one's surprise, he rejected the offer, and the game continued.

and you're telling me you'd really rather read that history book? whatever.