The Pickup Diaries Part 3: Pickup games

As my junior year of high school arrived, I was feeling pretty good about myself. After all, I was now about 65-ish pounds lighter than I had been, I had my driver's licence and -- most importantly -- I had a car. At my school, back in my day, probably only about one out of four students had car. It might have even been fewer than that. So having a car was a very big deal.

Kokomo High School required students to pick up their new books about a week before school actually started. I remember the day I picked up my books very clearly. Unfortunately, the Fury had gobbled up pretty much all of my excess cash. If I'd bothered to open my wallet, it might have screamed in agony. For this reason, I hadn't been able to buy a new wardrobe for school. In other words, I was still wearing my "fat clothes."

I may as well have wrapped myself up in a tarp. I had actually worn my favorite outfit from the year before -- a pair of gray, faded jeans and a white t-shirt with some logo that was popular at the time -- but it looked ridiculous now. And, despite my much-improved situation, I felt just as much of an idiot as I had the previous year.

You know how sometimes when you're out in public, you'll hear people laughing and talking, and paranoia causes you to assume that they're laughing and talking about you? Well, that's how I felt while waiting in that line. I started to sweat. Then I heard words that almost caused an involuntary urine spill: "What a fatass."

Despite the fact that I was now obviously thin -- in point of fact, I was a wee bit too thin and was trying to gain back a few pounds -- I was absolutely certain that "fatass" comment had been aimed at me. I wanted to turn around and scream, "I am not fat anymore!" But somehow I kept myself under control.

Of course, my first thought was: I need to lose more weight. But wait, wasn't I trying to fill out a little more? Then it hit me. It must be the clothes. It had to be the clothes. I wasn't fat, but they made me look fat. That's why somebody had called me a fatass.

Yes, the notion that the "fatass" comment had been directed at someone else never even occurred to me. That's the kind of tunnel vision I was dealing with at the time.

My mom agreed to get me some new clothes. The only shirt I remember specifically was this long-sleeved, button down shirt made out of blue denim. They were extremely popular at the time, and putting it on made me feel like a Grade A beefcake. So much so that -- despite the fact that the temperature was still hovering around 80 degrees -- I wore it on the first day of school.

But that wasn't the only stupid decision I made that day. The previous year, I had developed a mad crush on this girl Maureen W. To this day, I still have no idea why. I had never even spoken to the girl. She had sat three rows in front of me in art class. To my knowledge, she had never uttered a single word in that class the entire year. But I thought she was adorable.

As it happened, Maureen lived down the street from my friend Greg. So, that summer, we had walked by her house countless times. We'd never actually caught a glimpse of this girl who had captured my imagination, but it wasn't due to a lack of stalking.

Anyway, I was so full of piss and vinegar that I was determined to ask Maureen out immediately. My transformation had been so dramatic, so complete, I really believed I had a chance. C'mon: I was not thin and (to my mind) athletic, I was a licensed driver with his own car, and damn it, I was rocking a kickass mullet. How could she say no?

I wasn't sure when I was even going to see her...like I said, we hadn't made an actual audible connection yet. But as pure dumb luck would have it, her locker ended up being in the same hallway as my first period class. So, as I was pacing the hall looking for my usual crew of friends, I passed her. I remember thinking, in these exact words: What tremendous good fortune!

I know. What a nerd, right?

Now, I hadn't planned any of this out in advance. Not that a script would have actually made a difference in the outcome, but I might have looked less silly. Or maybe not. At any rate, I didn't even bother to stop and think this decision through. I walked right up and tapped her on the shoulder.

She turned around without a single flicker of recognition. "Yeah?"

"Hey, Maureen," I muttered. "I was wondering if, uh, you'd like to go out sometime?"

She looked at me like I'd actually just said, "Here! Eat this kitten!" The look had equal parts fear and disgust.

"Uh, no, I don't think so," she replied.

And that, my friends, is what we call a crash and burn.

I went to first period, which happened to be German class. My friends Greg and Dave D. were already there. I slumped down in my seat, a broken, defeated young man.

"Well," I began, "I asked out Maureen."

"How'd it go?" Greg asked.

"Not good," I replied.

"Bummer," Greg said.

And then life went on.

In the long run, getting turned down by Maureen was fine. After all, I had a much bigger crush on my long-term prospect, Cindy. And anyway, at that moment I was more obsessed with playing basketball than dating. I could hardly concentrate on my school work. When I looked out the window into those sunny, late-summer days, the only place I wanted to be was on the court.

I was still spending countless hours shooting around at Boulevard school, but I knew it was time for me to start branching out, playing against actual human beings. That was the next logical step.

But I was afraid.

See, during those solitary hours at the Boulevard court, I could imagine all sorts of things: Taking over games, hitting buzzer-beaters, have one-on-one duels with other great players. In my own basketball fantasies, I would always be The Man. But to play against other people, I risked the humiliation of losing. Maybe even losing badly.

Remember, my weight problems had made me a pariah in gym class. At KHS, juniors and seniors didn't have to take gym anymore. Therefore, I couldn't use gym class as an opportunity to measure my new skills. I had to go out and find competition.

That wasn't hard to do. At the time, Kokomo had two main courts where games were always going on: Highland Park and Forest Park. They were (and, as far as I know, still are) the two biggest public parks in the city. But Kokomo had many other smaller parks, most of which were equipped with a basketball court. Remember, Indiana has long been a hotbed for amateur basketball. A park without a basketball court was considered blasphemy.

I wasn't ready for the big parks yet. The idea of full court five-on-five made me queasy. I needed to ease into this whole "competing against other living, breathing humans" thing. So I began driving around the city, trolling for mini-games to get into. And I was about to learn that there were countless variations of basketball to be played when there was a limited number of available players.

Naturally, shooting games like H-O-R-S-E, 5-3-1, Knock Out and Around the Key were popular, but they were considered warmups for real competition.

As far as "real competition" went, here are the two games I found myself playing most often:

One-on-one

This is the most basic form of basketball. It was also the most gladiatorial in nature. Think Thunderdome here: Two men enter, one man leaves.

The rules generally go like this: Scoring is by 1s (for a standard two-point shot) and 2s (for a three-pointer). Many games go to 11 or 15, although you can agree on any set score before the game begins. I have also played games to 9, 11, 17 and 21. Usually, you need to go ahead by at least two points to win a game, which can lead to "overtime" sessions.

Possessions typically alternate with each scored basket (this is called "loser's out"). A player usually has to dribble the ball back past the three-point line after rebounding an opponent's missed shot. Some people only require taking the ball past the free throw line, which provides for more "fast break" opportunities where you scramble over the charity stripe and then make a mad scramble for the hoop before your opponent can recover.

There's also a rule by which you don't have to take the ball back past the designated line if your opponent shoots an air ball. I tend to avoid that rule.

Players are expected to call their own fouls ("Got it" or "Got one" or "Jesus Christ! That's a foul!"), although opponents will sometimes admit they fouled you (but don't count on that). They'll be very quick to call you for traveling or over the back of course. In some circles, it's considered bad form to call certain types of fouls or violations (such as offensive fouls or palming).

After fouls, turnovers (like traveling), out-of-bounds violations or made baskets, you have to check the ball in at the top of the key. For some players, the checking process is a mind game. Good form dictates that you either hand the ball to the offensive player or pass it directly to his waiting hands. However, some people will either set the ball directly on the ground (so it won't bounce up to the offensive player) or they drop lightly so it won't bounce high, thus forcing the offensive player to bend over to pick it up. This is usually a sign of disrespect and/or an attempt to psyche the offensive player out.

It's a bush league move. But certain players will do it to you every time.

Some people play by "make it, take it" rules, which means that you get the ball back every time you score a basket. I don't particularly like this style, because alternating possessions is a standard part of organized basketball. Plus, it can result in very short and unsatisfying games.

21

Here's the definition of 21 from Wikipedia:

"Twenty-one" is a game that can be played with two or more players. Each player has their own score, with the winner being the first to reach 21 points. The game begins with one of the players "breaking", which is to shoot one free throw with the ball to determine if he or she starts the game. While all other players can attempt to stop the score, the player who missed the last shot is usually the one "responsible" for playing defense against the next offensive player. However, no player has any teammates at any time in the game. The player with the ball may shoot at any time, and may collect his own rebound and shoot again. On a defensive rebound, the rebounder takes possession and must clear the ball by dribbling it beyond the three-point line before taking a shot.

Whenever a basket is scored, that player receives two points and goes to the free throw line, where each made free throw tacks on another one point to their score. The player is allowed to shoot free throws until he misses, at which point another player must rebound the ball, and the sequence starts again. This game can be played with the concept of tipped shots, where a player tips the ball in the basket off of a rebound of an opposing player's missed shot, the original shooter's score is reset back to zero. The game can also be played with deductions, such as minus one point when a player air-balls a shot or commits a traveling violation. Twenty-one is nearly always played in a half court game.

Now I personally have never played this game where you could continue taking free throws until you missed one. The cap has always been three free throws, and if you make all three, you get to check the ball in and try to score again. I've also played where you can choose to take one three-pointer instead of the three free throws. Hit it, and you get all three points and the ball back.

Speaking of which, this game (unlike one-on-one) uses 2s and 3s. Furthermore, in my experience, you always have to hit 21 exactly. Like hitting a three-pointer when you're at 18 or nailing a free throw when you're at 20. If you go over 21, your score returned to 13, which can be a real bitch in a close game. This leads to lots of fun scenarios. For instance, let's say you hit a two-pointer to put your score to 19. Now imagine you hit the first free throw and now you're at 20. At this point, your opponent might say something like, "Uh oh, lotta pressure on this free throw..."

If you brick it, not only are you stuck at 20, but you're guaranteed to go back to 13 the very next time you score.

Additionally, the tipping rule has some variations. For instance, I used to play with a group of guys who had a "three tips and out" rule. In other words, if your shot was tipped in three times in a single game, you were knocked out and couldn't play again until the next game. These guys also played it so that if you had fewer than 13 points, your score returned to zero on a tip. If you had more than 13 points, your score returned to 13.

21 is a great game to play when you have an odd number of players. However, if you play with more than three or five guys, it can quickly descend into anarchy and chaos...as I will explain in a future installment.

So these were the games I was now playing. Since I wasn't going to the bigger parks, I wasn't facing off against the best competition. But still, it was the first competition I had ever faced.

Early on, I wasn't really keeping track of whether I won or lost. These were purely experimental ventures. And yet...I was winning my fair share of games. This was in part a reflection of the talent I was facing, in part due to my height an shot selection (primarily inside), and in part because of my discovery of...

Pickup Rule #2: Rebound, rebound, rebound

You know that old saying possession is nine-tenths of the law? Well, in pickup basketball, possession is ten-tenths of the law. Which is, uhm, 100 percent. Of the law. Okay, what I'm getting at is this:

You can't score without the basketball.

I know, I know. That's obvious. And just as obviously, your opponent cannot score without the basketball. You may think it's idiotic to walk through this concept in your mind because it's so freaking "duh!" it hurts, but if you really embrace it, it'll change your game.

Just look at what Rajon Rondo did during the 2010 playoffs. He changed Boston's postseason destiny by going after the basketball. Sure, the Celtics lost the title, but they wouldn't have even been competing for it without Rondo's rebounding.

As obvious as this is, it stunned me -- and, frankly, it still stuns me -- how often pickup ballers just stand and watch the basketball. If you can develop a mentality for aggressively pursuing every rebound, every loose ball, every "50-50" ball...you're going to end up with a lot of extra possessions. And, more than likely, a lot of easy shots.

One of my most successful "plays" was wildly crashing the board after attempting a short jumper. I usually knew where my shot was going and I could run right to the spot I expected it to end up. In a lot of cases, I would simply run past my defender, catch the rebound and lay it back in.

Just as important, if not moreso, is defensive rebounding. Let's face it, pickup ballers are not in the NBA for a reason. Well, they're not in the NBA for many reasons, but the point I'm trying to make is: Pickup shooting percentages tend to be pretty low. That means lots of misses and plenty of rebounding opportunities.

To be successful, you've got to box out. And it's actually pretty easy to do. You don't need to be stronger or taller than your opponent. For the most part, rebounding is about focus and determination. When your opponent goes up for a shot, you absolutely must stay between him and the basket. Stand wide -- legs apart, elbows out -- and try to make physical contact with your opponent so you can a) know where he is and b) keep him from pushing past you.

As the ball's coming back down, time your jump so you can catch the ball at the height of your jump. Mistiming your jump can and will lose you possession of the ball. Go up and grab the ball with both hands. Don't tip it or try to yank down a one-handed board. Yes, it looks impressive, but no matter how good you are, it's going to cost you possessions. Which brings me to the next pickup rule...

Pickup Rule #3: Lost possessions lose games...and earned possessions win them

There are going to be games in which you're hopelessly overmatched. There will be games where you destroy your opponent. But many games -- if not most of them -- will probably be reasonably close. One or two possessions here or there decide the majority of games you'll play in (unless you're awesome...or awful).

For this reason, you can't fuck around. Unless you're working on new moves, taking bad shots or trying things you're not good at will cost you possessions. Taking even one bad shot can cost you a game. So don't do it. Being smarter and maintaining your focus will allow you to beat "better" players.

See, some people just don't go all-out or remain focused for an entire game...even short games to 9 or 11. This happens for various reasons. Sometimes they just don't have the necessary discipline, other times they may be too embarrassed to try so hard you'll realize they care about winning.

Use this against them.

You're not going to steal the ball every time you try to do it. You're not going to block every shot attempt. But you'll accomplish both here and there if you keep focused and work hard from start to finish. Trust me, effort can trump talent. It happens all the time, especially in pickup basketball.

So...I was out there, playing and learning, and becoming reasonably happy with where I was at as a basketball player. And now...now it was time for me to make some loftier goals.

First Lines...

"God is a slick God. Temple knows. She knows because of all the crackerjack miracles still to be seen on this ruined globe."

The Reapers Are The Angels by Alden Bell

(coming August 2010)

The Pickup Diaries Part 2: Learning the Game

Once I discovered the joys of shooting a basketball, the rest of the summer after my sophomore year in high school was a blur of balling, working out, and bussing tables at the Ponderosa. And even though I didn't love working at the 'Rosa as much as I enjoyed the other two activities, it was a means to an end. Namely, my first car: A 1978 Plymouth Fury.

Cherry red and roughly the size of a small ocean liner, the Fury -- which I named "The Red Baron" -- was a one-way ticket to freedom. I could now go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. You know, as long as my mom was cool with it and it was before curfew.

I purchased the Fury on a Friday night in early July. If I recall correctly, it cost around $800, which seemed both like a small fortune and a ridiculously tiny price to pay for virtual independence. The bad news: I didn't have my license yet. I had actually failed my first driver's test a couple weeks prior.

This still pisses me off. I was kicking ass on the test and then, at the very end, right outside the DMV, the woman administering the test asked me to parallel park. I nailed that too, and I naturally assumed I'd passed with flying colors. However, she failed me. When I asked why, she said it was because, while turning left onto Markland Avenue -- one of the main streets in Kokomo -- my left tire had passed ever-so-slightly through the opposite lane and cut over the front edge of the yellow line separating the two sides of the street.

"If there had been a car there, you would have hit it," she said.

"But there wasn't a car there," I replied.

"True, but there could have been."

"But...but...people do that all the time," I said.

"Yes, but new drivers shouldn't," she answered. "I think having to retake the test will break you of that bad habit, don't you?"

Seriously, I could have choked a bitch.

The Tuesday after buying the Fury, I went in to retake my test. I got the same instructor, and yes, she remembered me. She literally had me drive a circle around the DMV and passed me.

"I trust you learned your lesson?" she said.

The only lesson my 16-year-old self learned was that people in a position of power can and probably will screw with you. But at least I was now a licensed driver.

Now, I had taken the test in my mom's car -- a 1987 Buick Somerset -- because it was much smaller than the Fury and therefore easier to drive under testing conditions (that is, if I needed to parallel park again). When I got home, the first thing I did was jump into the Fury. Jammed in the key. Turned the ignition.

Nothing but a dry cough-like sound.

See, on Friday night, shortly after getting my new car home, my buddy Greg had come over and -- since I couldn't actually drive us anywhere yet -- we had spent the night sitting in the car listening to the tape deck...which was wired directly to the battery. That meant the radio could be on and running even when the key wasn't in the ignition. Sure enough, I'd left it running and the battery was now deader than Shaq's bathroom scale. Dead and so old, in fact, that jumping it only blew a little rust off the connectors.

One battery replacement later, I was finally on the road.

But I wasn't taking too many joy rides. Not at first anyway. About the only places I drove to were my friends' houses -- it kind of rankled them at first that I wouldn't drive us to the mall or the local cruising strip -- and my "home court." This was a little basketball court behind Boulevard School, my old elementary school, which just so happened to be about two blocks away from my high school, Kokomo High School.

The Boulevard court had some definite downsides. The backboards were made of the creakiest wood imaginable, and the rims were composed of the clangiest iron in the known universe. The blacktop surface of the court was covered in dead spots and shallow, nearly imperceptible depressions that tended to collect water. Oh, and it was surrounded on three sides by nothing but corn fields. This meant that a) there was no protection from the burning summer sun (so I often had no choice but to shoot toward the sun from one angle or another) and b) there was no protection from the wind.

And, if you've ever played outdoors, you know the wind can be a real problem.

That said, the Boulevard court was also relatively private. Nobody liked to play there for the reasons outlined above and the fact that there was no three-point line. As a result, I could practice for hours upon end without being interrupted or even seen. And I was definitely in Learning the Game mode. And for that, I wanted privacy.

Since I didn't have any actual coaching, I decided to make Larry Bird my coach. I re-read Bird's autobiography, Drive. I re-watched Larry Bird: A Basketball Legend as well as every old Celtics game I had on tape. I went to Kokomo's only major bookstore -- Walden Books -- and found a copy of Bird's instructional manual Bird on Basketball: How-to Strategies From The Great Celtics Champion. (Still available used from Amazon.com!)

I read. I watched. I read and watched some more. I digested. And then I tried to incorporate Bird's concepts into my budding game.

Which brings us to...

The Pickup Rules

In case you haven't seen Zombieland yet -- and I highly encourage you to do so immediately if you haven't -- the main character, Columbus, is a painfully awkward nerd who managed to survive the zombie apocalypse by strictly adhering to a series of zombie-specific survival rules. For instance:

Kickass indeed.
But long before Jesse Eisenberg was unintentionally (one assumes) fooling people into thinking he was Michael Cera -- they're entirely different people, I swear -- I was inventing the rules necessary for my survival in pickup basketball. I will be describing these rules throughout The Pickup Diaries.

Now...despite his reputation as a fearsome outside shooter, Bird's arsenal also included a wide variety of drives, dunks, layups, hooks and scoops. He also had some killer low post moves. That's why his career field goal percentage was just a shade under .500, and he probably would have finished above .500 if he hadn't limped through his final four seasons with bad back.

Just for kicks, here's Bird beating the Portland Trail Blazers left-handed. I'm not kidding. You might have heard or read about this one: Bird told teammates beforehand that being so great was boring him...and he he vowed to shoot left-handed all game. He didn't, but Bird still ending up scoring 22 of his 47 points using his left hand. I know. Awesome.


At any rate, Bird's shooting philosophy became the basis for my very first rule regarding pickup hoops:

Pickup Rule #1: Always take the highest percentage shot available.

Sounds obvious, right? So simple...but so very hard. I mean, you'd think everybody would do this. But take LeBron James and Kobe Bryant for example. They're probably the two best basketball players in the NBA, but they take an unbelievable number of crap shots. At times, it seems like they're stuck in permanent heat check mode. And they aren't alone. Lesser players do it (think Monta Ellis). Hell, even lousy players do it (for further reading, please refer to the collected works of Hughes, Larry).

Mind you, Bird wasn't without sin. He had the blood of a hundred bastard field goal attempts on his mangled hands. But in general, Bird tried to always get -- for himself or his teammates -- the highest percentage shot available. And for Larry Legend, that meant close to the hoop.

When Bird retired, he was perhaps the greatest three-point shooter in league history. Even today, he's considered the one of the all-time greats, in part due to his dramatic victories in the NBA's first three Long Distance Shootouts (1986, 1987 and 1988).

But in many ways, Larry hated the three and decried its use. This was because a) he felt it was a low percentage shot (which it is) and b) that if a team had a two-point lead at the end of the game, that team should never lose to a last-second shot. Which is kind of ironic, considering Bird won several games on last-second treys during his career.

However, despite this slight contradiction in philosophy and behavior, Bird's word was Basketball Law to me. For this reason, I never practiced threes. Never even attempted them while goofing around. To me, it was a waste of time that could be spent practicing shots I could actually use in a game. (For this same reason, I've never attempted a half court shot or developed any trick shots for HORSE, unless you consider a three-pointer from NBA range to be a trick shot.)

Therefore, all my shots were attempted from 15 feet and in. After all, I had almost grown to my full height of 6'3" -- I've often wondered whether I would have grown even taller had I not spent much of my childhood malnourished -- which made me a "big man" in pickup basketball terms. This meant that my game should be close to and going toward the basket.

I worked on every variety of layup I could think of. (Although it was quite a while before I realized the value of trying to develop my left hand...in fact, I'm still working on that.) I used my mental chalk to draw a 15-foot arc around the hoop and practiced shots from every angle. (However, due to dead spots and funky rims, I often avoided baseline shots, which would haunt me later.) And I worked on my inside moves.

Fortunately, I was a natural in the post due to decent footwork, a long wingspan (or, as my college roommate BadDave called them, my Gorilla Arms), and a soft touch. Plus, I had spent my formative years following the Bird-era Celtics. This meant hours upon hours of watch Kevin McHale put opponents into his torture chamber.


McHale -- yes, my last name is also McHale, no Kevin and I are not related -- had a seemingly endless array of low post moves. This wasn't exactly true. He had a set number of moves, but the moves had so many subtle variations that they seemed endless. These moves are actually described in stunning detail in The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons, which makes the book a must-read for anybody who wants to became a killer post player in pickup ball.

And that was my life for the next two months. Endless, tireless practice. I practiced in the morning, the afternoon, and at night. I played in the sun, the wind, and in the rain. By the end of that period, I was knocking down a fairly high percentage of my shots, which made me feel pretty good about myself. After all, I had only just picked up the sport.

What I didn't (and couldn't) understand at the time was this: A large part of my early "success" was due to the fact that I had focused on a very specific and therefore very limited number of shots. Not to mention that every shot had been attempted against no defense. But these things don't matter when you don't know any better. I was confident. A little cocky even. And with the new school year fast approaching...

...it was time to take my game on the road.

The Pickup Diaries Part 1: Fat to Fit

Warrior Dash: Made with lightning...real lighting!
I'd like to open this post by telling you about the Warrior Dash. It's basically a 5K with obstacles like barbed wire, mud pits, rope walls and freaking fire. It is without question the manliest thing I've ever done. I actually grew a second pair of balls by the time I dragged myself across the finish line...and it can do the same for you. For our female readers, don't worry: You'll merely grow some extra ovaries.

Anyway, welcome to this year's summer series The Pickup Diaries. Written in the spirit of Livin' Large, this series will serve as the memoirs of my "career" as a pickup basketball player. Hopefully, this will provide you with a little entertainment while you're waiting for the next NBA season to start up.

Part 1

As of the summer of 2010, my pickup basketball career has spanned 20 years, or seasons, or whatever you want to call them. Of course, based on how my teenage years began, my career almost ended up being zero seasons.

You see, here's the thing: I was fat and sucked at basketball.

When I was three years old, my mom was in a bad car accident. During the following year, she had several surgeries, but her main problem -- severe nerve damage in her neck and arms -- would never heal and could not be corrected. That was bad, because my mom was a manual laborer at a local car factory. And now she couldn't do that work...or any other work for that matter. As a result, she spent the next seven-plus years on disability.

That was a rough seven-plus years. My mom was a single parent with two kids and no support from either father. Suddenly, her yearly income was one-third of what it had been and, on top of that, she had a Shaq-sized pile of medical debt. And of course I'm talking about the post-2001 Shaq, alternately known as "Fat Shaq," "Shaq Albert" and "The Shambling Pork Beast." As you can imagine, this presented our little family unit with a lot of problems, not the least of which was food. Specifically, the lack thereof.

This is how it worked. My mom got paid only once a month, around the first of the month. Usually, buying groceries was the first thing she did. For the first week, we ate really well. During the second week, we nommed on the leftovers from the first week. Weeks three and four were...bad. By the end of the month, we had almost nothing to eat. I used to get by on mustard sandwiches. That's exactly what it sounds like, by the way: Two pieces of (usually semi-to-mostly stale) bread with nothing but mustard between them.

If you do the relatively simple math, I spent about half of my childhood either hungry or nearly starving. And my mom and sister were right there with me.

Occasionally, my mom would try to supplement our diet with offerings from the local Rescue Mission. Hell, we even stood in line for a few hours to get a two large blocks of that horrific government cheese that was being handed out during the Reagan administration. (Speaking of which: Fuck you, Ronald Reagan. That shit sucked.) But my mom was a very proud woman, and, more often than not, her pride prevented her from accepting food stamps or standing in food lines with the rest of Kokomo's needy.

She never wanted to admit just how needy we were.

At the end of that seven-plus year period, my mom finally made it back to work. This was due in part to the fact that she had finally adjusted to the constant pain of her physical condition, but also because the UAW had gotten her company, Delco Electronics, to agree to a series of physical restrictions for partially disabled employees. Basically, Delco could no longer discriminate against workers who couldn't lift and move objects beyond their physical capacity.

A steady paycheck didn't make out mountains of debt disappear in the blink of an eye, but my mom could afford food again. Not just for one or two weeks, but every week of every month of the year. Unfortunately, all those years of being deprived one of life's most basic necessities had a nasty effect on my mom's outlook on food. No matter how much food she bought, she always felt like we were still on the brink of starvation. Every time she walked into a grocery store, she shopped like our cupboards were bare.

She's still like that to this day. I had to move her to a new apartment a few years ago, and she had (for example) three gallons of milk, 21 jars of pickles, 172 cans of soup, and 68 boxes of JELL-O. Yes, I counted. No, I am not making this up. Mind you, she was living alone at this point. I asked her what one person could possibly need with 68 boxes of JELL-O. She said: "You just never know." I took her shopping a few weeks later and she tried to buy four more boxes.

Sometimes, life can really screw with your mind.

Anyway, I was hitting full-blown puberty around the time my mom went back to work. I was a skinny little runt, which is about what you'd expect of a kid who was living off bread and water half the time. But now, suddenly, food was coming at me from everywhere. Fatty, high calorie food. (Science hadn't discovered nutrition yet.) And I ate it. I ate everything in front of me. I asked for more. I ate well beyond what my hunger necessitated. Now that I could eat however much I wanted, that's exactly what I did. I literally couldn't help myself.

My metabolism -- metabolism being something else science hadn't discovered yet -- couldn't handle the extreme change in my caloric intake. Not surprisingly, I started gaining weight. Within a year, I had gone from skinny to pudgy. Within two years, I was very pudgy. Three years later, I was a hadn't quite reached the "human beanbag" stage, but I was a fatty. And you know how some people can be overweight but they're also just big, solid people? Like, you can tell there's significant muscle under all those extra pounds? Yeah, well, that wasn't me. I had always had been slender and long-limbed. For most of my life, I had been skin and bones...more bones than skin. Now I had some serious extra flesh wrapped around those bones.

Extreme weight gain over a relatively short period of time didn't exactly do wonders for my physical abilities. Mind you, I had spent about six years playing P.A.L. soccer. Now, I was the dreated Last Guy Picked For Anything in Gym Class. I was bad at almost everything. I was that kid who couldn't do a chin-up, or climb that damn rope that ran to the ceiling fo the gymnasium. I remember failing a really easy running test. I remember someone flicking one of my man boobs during a swimming lesson. It was humiliating, and so I began to avoid sports, or anything else that required physical exertion.

This, of course, didn't help my condition.

By my sophomore year, I was still a walking sausage, but my life changed course one day when I was waiting for my Driver's Ed class to start. I think nearly every high school has one or a small handful students who are universally regarded as the absolute bottom of the social ladder. You know...The Losers. Everybody, no matter how fat or ugly or whatever can make fun of The Losers because, well, just because. It's a high school thing.

Anyway, I happened to be standing next to Mark M., who was one of The Losers of my school. I wasn't talking to him -- I doubt I even knew he was there, being of a (only slightly) higher social caste -- when, unprompted, he turned to me and said: "You're a real fatass."

I was stunned. Not only had I just been blasted for no reason whatsoever by one of The Losers, but he was right. I was a fatass. I was completely disarmed. I had no comeback. He was right.

That afternoon, I went straight home, stomped up to my mom and said: "I need a weight set."

This wasn't the first time I had shown a sudden, passionate interest in exercise. However, because that interest had never sustained itself past the "sudden, passionate expression of interest" stage, my mom was more than a wee bit skeptical. She said: "Are you sure? Will you really use it."

At this point, my determination was absolute. "Yes," I said. And I damn well meant it.

We went to the local Service Merchandise and bought a 125-pound weight set. Service Merchandise worked like this: You bought what you wanted in the store and then drove your car around back to pick it up at the end of this long conveyor belt. The weight set was packaged in a large cardboard box. When it reached my end of the conveyor belt, I tried to pick it up...and couldn't. I tugged with all my might but couldn't budge it. Soon, a man came out of the warehouse and casually picked the box up then dropped it into the trunk of my mom's car. I felt like such a weakling.

At home, I still couldn't pick up the box. I had to open it in the trunk and carry the weight set into the house weight-by-weight.

I went from binging on food to binging on workouts. I lifted weights. I ran up and down the hill in my backyard. I did three aerobics shows every day: "Getting Fit" with Denise Austin -- yes, I'm man enough to admit I once worked out to Denise freaking Austin -- "Bodies in Motion" with Gilad Janklowicz, and "Basic Training" with Gilad's sister, Ada. The funny part? All three of these programs were broadcast back-to-back-to-back on ESPN. I'm being completely serious. It's hard to imagine that now, right? Kind of hard to fit in aerobics shows on ESPN these days. You'd have to make room between mock drafts and people screaming at each other about when Brett Favre is going to retire or whether Kobe Bryant is now the Greatest Laker Ever...and that's not going to happen.

I also returned to starvation mode, this time by choice. Some days I might eat nothing but one piece of bread with a little peanut butter on it. Other days I only ate a doughnut. It was a terrible diet for a growing teenager, but my obsession with losing weight quickly reached "borderline eating disorder" mode.

The school year ended and I kept pushing harder. By the end of June, I had lost almost 70 pounds. The old, skinny me was back, only now I had some actual muscle tone to go along with it. Not as much as I should have, maybe, because doughnuts didn't pack a lot of protein.

One Saturday evening around the end of June, I was hanging out with my friend Gauvin. We were chilling in his backyard -- which, like many homes in Indiana, was equipped with a rickety basketball goal -- listening to my latest discovery: Surfing with the Alien by Joe Satriani. While Gauvin was rewinding and replaying the tape over and over and over again, I picked up an old, half-flat basketball and started casually shooting hoops.

I don't know exactly what happened on that lazy summer night, but basketball -- a sport I loved to watch but loathed to play -- suddenly felt right to me. I became almost obsessively fascinated with the ball flicking through the net. After making it happen once, I wanted to do it again and again. So while Gauvin was wearing a hole in my prized tape, I stood about 15 feet from his old basketball goal and attempted several hundred, maybe even a couple thousand jump shots.

I was hooked. And my new vice would, in part, define the next two decades of my life.

The Kindle Korner & eReader Price Wars...

Interested in a eReader? This may be the time to buy. Yesterday, there was a bit of a price war going on in the eReader market... First Barnes & Noble announced their Nook eReader with Wi-Fi & 3G would be priced at $199 (down from $259). And the Nook with Wi-Fi only price is $149. No sooner did Barnes & Noble make their announcement, then Amazon jumped on the band wagon. The Kindle 2, the latest generation model, with global 3G coverage is now priced at $189 (down from $249)! And of course the Kobo eReader, Borders new eReader offering, is priced at $149. With those eReaders, you still have more choices- The Sony Touch priced at $199 (down from $250), The Sony Pocket priced at $170, and coming soon the Aluratek Libre (7/20 from Borders) so far priced at $120. Here are the links to check out all these great bargains...

• Nook eReader with Wi-Fi & 3G($199) & Wi-Fi only($149)... Barnes & Noble
• Kindle 2 with Global 3G Coverage ($189).... Amazon
• Kobo eReader ($149)................................... Borders

*Update on the Kobo eReader! As of 6/22 until ? you should get a $20 gift card with your Kobo eReader purchase. Look for it when ordering.

• The Sony Touch eReader ($199)................. Sony
• The Sony Pocket eReader ($170)................ Sony
• The Aluratek Libre (coming 7/20 "$120"). Borders

While you are at the websites, you can find more information on what each of these eReaders offers. The Nook, Kobo, Sony & Aluratek eReaders are ePub friendly. ePub (electronic publication) seems to be the standard form for eBooks. Kindle does not support ePub, they have their own format supported by books you buy at the Amazon site.

Do I have a preference? I love my Kindle 2, but if I want to read books in the ePub format I needed another eReader. I bought a Sony Pocket eReader for that purpose, and have enjoyed using it. I decided I would try the Kobo eReader because it's design is similar to the Kindle2, and I really like the Kobo book site to buy eBooks. I just received my Kobo eReader in the mail on thursday (review coming soon...) and I really am liking it. There are some draw backs, such as speed ( it is SLOW when loading your books), but the feel is similar to the Kindle and it is light! Do you have an eReader yet?! Share what one you like and why!

*Oh and just a note here, if you are interested in buying the Sony Pocket eReader after looking into all the choices, you can buy the Sony eReaders from Borders, BUT the price reduction (for now) on the Sony Pocket eReader is only if you buy it directly from the Sony Store.

Manute Bol: R.I.P.

Originally, I planned to start my new summer series The Pickup Diaries today. However, I couldn't in good conscience ignore the passing of Manute Bol.

Read about him...especially his activism. Seriously.

If you weren't following the NBA in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it's hard to describe Manute Bol. Manute wasn't a great player -- although, as Neil Paine of Basketball-Reference pointed out, he was one of the most prolific shot blockers in league history -- but he was unlike anything anybody had seen before. It was part cultural phenomenon, part freakshow. And I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just that you couldn't not stare at Bol. I watched him play the Pacers twice in person, and I was transfixed (although Manute didn't log many minutes).

I mean, the dude was nearly eight feet tall. He once blocked four shots on a single possession. He even drilled six three-pointers in a single half (against the Phoenix Suns...of course).

Like I said, he was unlike anything anybody had seen before. And we'll never see anything like him again.

Muffins & Mayhem, Recipes for a Happy (if disorderly) Life by Suzanne Beecher... A Review

Suzanne Beecher's Recipe Box is filled with

the Necessities of Life-

Stories to help keep her Grounded

and Recipes for Good Stuff to Eat...

She Shares some of that in Muffins & Mayhem...

A few words that immediately come to mind after reading Suzanne Beecher's memoir, Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if disorderly) Life are charming, inspiring. Suzanne welcomes you into her life, and with humor and a bit of melancholy at times, she shares her everyday triumphs, her fears & joys and those kinds of moments that we ALL can relate to! I laughed as I read about Suzanne's mother making her freeze the laundry before ironing when she was young (Suzanne does say this works),or when she tells us about her new found "critter friends" when she moves from Wisconsin to Florida, imagine flour weevils organizing a rescue mission or squirrel psychology (the stories are hilarious!). But then life isn't always rosy, and I cried as Suzanne tells us about her bitter sweet goodbye to her estranged father who was dying. She is inspiring as she shares with us her thoughts about life, and this is how she feeds our souls. But she also feeds our appetites as her memoir is filled literally with "Recipes for Life"!

Here's what the publisher has to say about Muffins & Mayhem... Suzanne Beecher’s happy, loving voice has brought more than 350,000 people to her online book club at DearReader.com, where her daily column offers her candid, thought-provoking reflections on life, inspiring countless readers to look at their "ordinary" lives in a new way. By turns funny and poignant, Suzanne is the reassuring friend across the kitchen table with a refreshing, jaunty attitude about life, even in the face of whatever difficulties it may bring. Suzanne has had her own share of troubles to overcome. Left home alone at an early age, she struggled with difficult and distant parents, dealt with heartbreak, became a hard-working single mom, and overcame two substance addictions and a physical impairment. But along the way, she found comfort in baking and sharing food with her friends and family. She learned to take the good with the bad, and her life is now inspiring proof that faith and persistence are the keys to success.

I had never read Suzanne's daily column at DearReader.com, but I had heard some buzz about her book, Muffins & Mayhem, and wanted to read it! A BIG Thank you goes to Ashley of Simon & Schuster, who sent me a copy of Muffins & Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy (if disorderfly) Life! I could relate to so many of Suzanne's "adventures", and her challenges tugged at my heart, but also gave me hope as I saw her persevere. Her writing is fresh, honest, as if you've known her all your life. You can read this book in one big sitting or you can nibble at it a little at a time, enjoying a story here and there... The book flows easily as you read, but the stories themselves can be enjoyed individually as well. And the recipes! Well, I am looking forward to making some of them! Especially Mrs. Creswick's Frosted Meat Loaf that Suzanne shares with us soon after we open the book, or the Lava Cake! Learn more about Suzanne, find her book club links, find a link to her daily column, and even get some of her recipes at DearReader.com. (Hey, here's the link to Mrs. Crestwicks Frosted Meatloaf!) You can learn more about her book at MuffinsandMayhem.com, and even read an EXCERPT there! Plus, you can create your own Cookbook of Memories. I enjoyed reading Muffins & Mayhem so much! If you enjoy reading inspiring stories, or just need a smile, you will enjoy reading Muffins & Mayhem too! It's like swapping stories across the kitchen table with your best friend, a coffee and well, a muffin!

*P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!