Buttermaker

Ah yes it's March and for the rest of the week i'm going to regale with tales of athletic endeavors or some such shit cuz you see i was once an athlete, many moons ago, yes i know it's hard to believe but i was a fucking whiz kid with a basketball in my hand, of course this was somewhat before my forays into criminal enterprises and diving headlong into space exploration aka drinkin' and druggin' but i spent a good part of my youth running around with a little orange ball and tossing it through a little orange hoop and i was pretty damn good at it, how good you might ask? well i must admit now that i forfeited my amateur status in my 20's when a friend of mine who worked at a swanky private club (and who i also sold grass to way back when) inquired if i might be interested in getting paid to play for this private club, seems they hadn't won a game in the rich guys league for ages and were looking for any help they could get, of course we had to lie and say i worked in the kitchen or something, it was highly doubtful that a 6'4 dreadlocked white boy was a member at the old money club but the story worked and i slowly helped them climb to respectability and by the third season with them ( a season being nothing more than a session, i think there were 4 a year) we had managed to climb over .500 and soon after would do something unheard of in club history but not only make the play-offs but actually win a game, should have seen my pay packet that season, oh it wasn't much but to a fledgling hood an extra four or five Ben Franklins was always a happy surprise... usually blown in a week of non-stop partying but hey i never claimed to be smart...

But this little tale is not about my glory days as gym rat but more of my new found vocation dig... you see last week one of the I-mac's coaches couldn't make practice and since they need two guys to run the thing the fine German guy who was head coach asked me to fill-in, the Jerry is a nice guy and freely admits he knows next to nothing about hoops so it was basically my practice to run and i felt i did a pretty good job of it and the kid's all seemed to have fun and as i walked out of the gym one of the other fathers walked up to me and smiled, " i think you missed your calling" he said, "you're really good with those kids", i did my best aw shucks and thanked him and rounded up the I-mac and headed to the car and didn't really think much more about it... that is until the next practice where i sat on the sidelines and let the usual coaches do their thing and had 3 more parents come up to me and ask why i wasn't out there and tell me i need to get my clearances because all they heard about was how good a coach i was, i was like huh? and then the one told me how her son couldn't stop talking about the stuff he learned and this and that and before you knew it i was being roped in, i get to coach the last two practices of the season, being 6 and 7 year olds the season isn't very long and i gotta admit i'm looking forward to it...

What's funny is for some reason i can display and enormous amount of patience when i'm teaching these kids, granted it's only an hour long and i'm not expecting them to be playing in the NBA anytime soon but i seem to be able to communicate with them and get them to listen, i don't know if it's the height or the voice or the fact they think i know what the fuck i'm talking about but i see coaches get frustrated at times cuz a dozen 6 and 7 year old boys have the collective attention span of almost .04 seconds and then of course balls are flying or someones trying to trip somebody or their rolling around on the floor, thing is when i talk to them the seem to stop, it's not the first time i've filled in (filled in as football aka soccer before as well) but for some unknown reason things just seem to click... and you know what? i really fucking enjoy it, it's fun to teach kids who want to learn and i understand all of them don't and that some are there purely cuz mom and dad are forcing them but i try and get them all excited to learn and play and i encourage them all, hell it's a game and they're young and it should be fucking fun dammit!

And so there it is, i've got something to do this week other than sit home at night and get wasted, of course after practice i'm sure i'll find a way to impair myself, seems the one thing i'm good at these days but that's okay, i'll look to my mentor Morris Buttermaker for guidance, and who knows one of these kids might mix a damn fine Caucasian or at least know how to pour a proper Guinness, can't be any worse than half the bartenders out here in the burbs... now back to business as usual.