I know what you’re thinking. I’ve heard the question all my life. It’s not if I’m good at math. It’s the other question.
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Standup Comedy
IN pre-school I had my first epiphany. Knowing that word would have come in handy back then. It would have been another—epiphany.
Do you recall the year you learned profound words? In the 1980s, someone explained the meaning of extrapolate. It blew my mind. In the 2020s I began using extrapolation to figure out why I walked into a room—because my mind has been blown.
Extrapolation is the recognition of a pattern to deduce what comes next. For example, if I begin counting: 3, 6, 9, you can extrapolate the next number is…? Okay, that’s good. Everyone who said “10” is in the back row. Don’t worry about writing down the year. We need our mathematicians in the front row.
Now I walked into this room with a purpose this evening. Hopefully, there’s a reason for everything I said thus far. Oh yeah, your question!
Whenever I walk into a room, people can’t help themselves. The only change over the years is the verb tense. Now people phrase it, “Did you play basketball?” Some simply ask, “Did you play ball?”
They’re not referring to ping pong. There’s one sport on their minds. You can extrapolate the reason why the question is so common.
About 15 percent of the U.S. population is over 6-foot tall. When you factor in men who believe they’re 6-foot, that number swells to 50 percent. Less than 4 percent of the population is over 6-foot-2. I’m 5-foot-16 inches. I’ll give you time to do the math.
Here’s the thing. Have you measured the height of professional basketball players? Shaq is like 5-foot-25 inches.
Sure, Shaquille O’Neal is an anomaly, but so are most of the pro-ball players. That’s why they are pro-ball players. Even those in the back row know that. However, in high school, a 6-foot tall kid among 5-foot-6 players is also an anomaly.
To answer your question about whether I played ball, you need to understand something about the mother who raised me. At 5-foot-7, she wasn’t particularly tall, but that’s not the point. She was frugal.
So when I expressed an interest in sports, she supported it in the most economical way possible. She handed me a leach and told me to walk a dog from the animal shelter. As I got more specific about playing ball, I expected a visit to a sporting goods store.
There are a number of them. I don’t know what’s popular near you. In my childhood neighborhood, the pantheon of sporting goods was Big 5.
Where did my mother take me? That’s right. The grocery store. On the isle between the peanut butter and the jelly there’s a little section near the floor with kids’ toys. She handed me a package that contained a soccer ball, a football, and a basketball.
My eyes gleamed with excitement. I couldn’t tell by looking at our 13-inch black-and-white television, but at 4 inches in diameter, these must have been regulation size balls. So I couldn’t wait to get home for my first workout—opening the blister pack. After that, I set up the net and perfected my craft. This was when I was about 8 years old.
Fast forward to when I was in high school, about 4 years later. Why are you looking at me like that? Yeah, I was in high school at 12. I skipped a few grades, because of poor math.
There I was, 6-foot tall among a bunch of 5-foot-6-inch guys, so the coach asked me, “Can you dunk?”
What else was I to say but, “Of course I can dunk.”
People were taking bets on what was hailed as the match of the century. For you millennials, that's the twentieth century. We were playing a team with an odd name, called the girls.
So coach got excited and traded two of his fast-dribbling 5-foot-6 players for Pre-Shaq. I get on the court and it’s like having front-row seats to the Harlem Globetrotters. I’m standing in the middle of the court with my arms and legs spread apart, thinking no one could get past me, as Curly Neal slides through my legs while continuing to dribble. When I turn around, he bounces the ball off my head to Meadowlark Lemon who bumps it off his butt into the net.
Our team is taking a beating, so the coach tells the team to pass the ball to Pre-Shaq. Now, I wasn’t privy to the rule book but they have penalties for things like traveling, which to me seemed like the goal of the game. How are you going to get the ball to the other end of the court without traveling?
Anyway, one of these little guys on my team launched what looked like a medicine ball towards my chest with the force of a cannon. It almost knocked me down. Then the team began chanting, “Dunk, dunk, dunk!”
Mind you, there’s a slight difference between the diameter of the balls my mother bought for me from the supermarket and this monstrosity. For one thing, I couldn’t get one hand around it. For another, the net was much higher than the one over the wastebasket in my bedroom.
So as I waddled down towards the net, yes waddled. Growth spurts mess with coordination. As I waddled with two hands on this massive medicine ball above my head (so I wouldn’t drop it), 5-foot-6 Curly Neal slapped the ball right out of my hands, sending it traveling to the other end of the court.
I didn’t know what was wrong with the referee, so I shouted the infraction for him. “Traveling!”
A whistle blew, and the crowd broke out in cheers and applause. I prepared to take my bow, to acknowledge their accolades, when everyone mistakenly began giving high-fives to Curly!
Fortunately, I bet on the other team. It earned me enough lunch money for the entire school year.
So, you want to know whether the tall guy played basketball in school? A simple extrapolation of my high school experience should answer the question. Obviously yes, I played ball!
That’s my time folks!
Return twice weekly for miniseries. Any relation to actual persons or events is coincidental. Login provides the most immersive experience. About 1100 total words. Audio may include sound effects that alter reading time. Story includes one or more generative AI images to help readers visualize scenes.
