Kobe

   

 I saw Kobe play in the NBA Finals in 2009 courtesy of my brother, Peter. He had these great seats at the Staples Center and I was in LA for work. He gave me his seat and I attended with my nephew.

     I knew the seats were top notch when the commissioner of basketball sat down in front of me. You see, basketball is best seen close up. Close enough so you can see the faces of the players.

     Kobe was at his peak and was playing both offense and defense. The defense was what you could see when you were close enough to see his face. There was a priceless moment near the end of the game when he was exhorting one of his young teammates to play closer to his man. Every time down the floor for the last few minutes he yelled to Trevor Ariza to get closer. Ariza was much younger than the thirty year old Kobe, who had become the youngest professional to ever score 25,000 points earlier in the season. I could see he was scared to do what Kobe was asking, but also scared not to do what Kobe was asking. In the end, he did it and the Lakers won.

     It's funny how the greatest professional basketball players from Los Angeles are all known by their first names. In New York they are mostly remembered by their last names. Though I must confess to not having attended a basketball game in NYC since the 1970s.

     East Coast versus the West Coast

     Kobe, Magic, LeBron, Wilt, Kareem

    vs.

    Frazier, Monroe, Reed, Bradley, DeBusschere

Why Do Conceptions Of Friendship Vary?

     If the title of this post sounds like a question asked of Liberal Arts college students, you are absolutely correct. I was posed this exact question 40 years ago by a Harvard educated professor at Dickinson College. The class had the entire term to consider it and numerous works from the best minds of sociological thought to reference. There was Emile Durkheim and Max Weber to name two who we were required to be mentioned in these term papers.

     Looking back on the question now I'll simply reference what I recall growing up in Ridgewood and what I have deduced about my classmates since that time. Friendship has to do with the side of town you grow up on, the religious institution you were born into, birth order, your role models, and some luck. I was lucky enough to live next to Willard School and could always see who was on the playing fields and what they were playing. I would stay away when the game was Kill-The-Guy-With-The-Ball. A truly brutalizing amusement which pitted grades against one another. If some variety of baseball or touch football was being played I had no problem venturing out.

     Since those reckless days I doubt the game is played much or anybody fondly recalls a particularly bone-crunching pile on tackle. It's all too crazy to revel in, as opposed to tackle football. The RHS football players are a very close-knit bunch to this day. I'm not a doctor so I can guess about any injuries they might have sustained which are lurking in their futures. Once again I feel fortunate that I didn't get involved. One concussion in a lifetime is probably enough and I experienced that during the summer of my eighth year on this planet. Truth be told I did player tackle football in the fifth grade and my parents took the precaution of having me cleared to play by the same Dr. Branigan who tended to me in the hospital after my mishap on a bicycle. He was an institution in Ridgewood and no truer words could be spoken about him than those from his college yearbook:
   

     "To know him is to like him."

 
     The good doctor said he didn't see anything wrong with me and set me loose to crack skulls with the other ten and eleven year olds. I was one season and then done; the heat of summer workouts and the tackling never appealed. Though many I played with continued on through high school and a few even in college. A good size contingent remain friends to this day, correspond via email, and regularly attend our reunions. Was it the athletics, the east side of Ridgewood they lived on, or something else I can't put my finger on? It doesn't matter. Conceptions of friendship will vary and the reason why is that some people believe their relationships are important enough for them to want to maintain them. Others just don't. The Beatles said it best:

   

Be The Wisest

     Chip Conley uses the phrase "Modern Elder" to describe who are experienced and not the least interested in retiring. He has a blog called Wisdom Well which is worth a look:

https://wisdomwell.modernelderacademy.com/wisdom-is-not-knowing


     I have adopted this title for myself because I feel it fits me. Here is an example to consider from Psychologist R.D. Laing. "The lesson is clear. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. Be the wisest."

There is something I don't know

that I am supposed to know.

I don't know what it is I don't know

and yet am supposed to know,

and I feel I look stupid

if I seem both not to know it

and not know what it is I don't know.

Therefore, I pretend I know it.

This is nerve-racking

since I don't know what I must pretend to know.

Therefore I pretend to know everything.

I feel you know what I'm supposed to know

but you can't tell me what it is

because you don't know

that I don't know what it is.

You may know what I don't know,

but not that I don't know it,

and I can't tell you.

So you will

have to

tell me

Everything.

Last Tango In Halifax

     Last Tango In Halifax is a familiar tale and well worth a Netflix binge. The story was created by Sally Wainwright and it appears she knows a thing or two about teenage crushes. The Plot: "At age 16, Alan's late wife failed to pass on a letter from Celia, his longtime crush, with an apology for missing their first date and her forwarding address." The series begins fifty years later upon a chance meeting between Alan and Celia in a restaurant. Wonderfully funny and complicated stories ensue. Check it out.

     I mention this BBC series because it reminds me of all the things classmates say, or don't say, to one another. Some words were no doubtful meant to be hurtful when they were uttered and others went unsaid. Both hurt in different ways.

     It reminds me of a shoulder I separated at the Jersey Shore in 1976. I popped it back in place and have felt its glow ever since, especially on rainy days or when the weather temperature changes radically. Kinda like the people from High School, they appear in our lives at reunions and some reproduce old agonies like I feel in my shoulder if I raise my arm too fast. Given a little rest the pain goes away and likewise, the sights of old classmates fade pretty quickly after a reunion, too.

     What has amazed me after working on two reunions is the number of people who currently live in Ridgewood but don't attend. What sorts of hurts must they be feeling to want to avoid those of us making an infrequent visit to their hometown? This is not a criticism. We all process grief/pain in our own ways and in our own times. Maybe after fifty years they will have forgotten or forgiven whatever occurred. Time has this wonderful capacity to make old facts seem less important and for making us remember that each of us is the sum of everything we have done, not just the hurtful moments or those moments left unsaid so long ago.

Social Studies

     I always liked and did well in Social Studies but never understood what the term meant. I could understand Civics but for some reason that term stopped being used.

     Until the 1960s, it was common for American high school students to have three separate courses in civics and government. But civics offerings were slashed as the curriculum narrowed over the ensuing decades. We also lost cooking or Home Economics and Auto Shop. I could understand the latter because cars today are just huge computers with thousands of lines of code and the inner workings require much more than the old wrench set. Though the loss of  Home Economics was and remains a tragedy. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to utilize one of the baking techniques I learned in my cooking classes in Junior High School. It's funny to recall they kept us boys separate from the girls for some reason. Doubtful the classes wouldn't be co-ed if they existed today. Look, I understand budget cuts and the expenses of stoves, refrigerators and food.  But where is the money going instead? My guess is to buy computers and build computer labs.

     Just a hunch, but I suggest fewer computers and more stoves would make our kids more responsible and civic-minded.

     Who know? Maybe the trend will reverse itself and our public schools will begin teaching Civics and Home Economics again. All I knew back then was that my cooking skills would come in handy the rest of my life, and they have!

History

     The Irish New Yorker and novelist Peter Quinn recently remarked that, "the past often goes ignored or denied; though it never goes away."

      He remarked the same evening that, "history is a form of therapy which helps uncover ourselves, however fractured."

     I don't do his quotes justice as they were delivered to an adoring room full of Irish and Irish Americans. Most people he said when comes to history only suffer history, rather than being the ones to record it or to make it.

     This blog is an attempt to record the history of those who lived fairly ordinary lives but who's seemingly insignificant activities, many years prior, caused me to stop and remember them. It took Quinn's observations to decipher what I have been doing these past twelve years. Yes, it's been therapeutic for me, and to a lesser extent for a reader or two who have come across these somewhat fractured remembrances.

     Some days the memories come racing back to mind and wake me up. Other times they are formed over a people of days in my mind and then placed on a page to see how they look. I do go back and edit, delete and add to past entries. Don't know if there is a rule against that but I violate it fairly often if there is. Writers can make their owns rules from my understanding and that's the story I'll stick with.