My Plan

M.C. IDOL Chapter 4

Sitting on my bed, staring at my ceiling I start to think . . . When I get older, grown-up, shaving twice a day and getting my hairy back waxed, I’m gonna be a Rich and Famous comic or talk show host: I’m going to drive a Corvette and a motorcycle and I’m going to fly all over the world and see cool stuff: famous cities, and all the oceans, big lakes, deep rivers, and huge, honking mountains;

I’ll visit Continents like Europe and Australia, and places like Central America and, I don’t know, even places like Rochester, New York and Lubbock, Texas, and Elgin Illinois, which might seem like pretty much normal places, but they will be great for me because I’ll be Rich and Famous and everyone there will love me.

I’ll see Every Place Any Place because by then, I’ll be grown-up, and beloved all over the world, for being so hilarious and I’ll do whatever I want.

How am I going to achieve all this? That’s what I call Plan ‘A’

My First Plan ‘A’

Right now, though, I’m still lying here in my room, and in case you didn’t catch this little detail yet, life as a 12-year-old runt sucks.

So what else is there for me to do, trapped in my stupid room but to think about the future?

That and thinking about how to be even better at being, you got it, the funniest kid in the world?

For a while, I wanted to become a great athlete. I’ve always loved sports, so my first Plan ‘A’ was to become . . . (drum roll please) . . .

King Jock

And for a while that plan even seemed Do-able . . . The First Plan ‘A’

To be more specific, King Jock Plays H-O-R-S-E

My best friend Brad Bukowski and I have shot hoops in Tommy Anderson’s backyard about a million times. And we’ve played, I don’t know, maybe ten million games of HORSE. Once when I was 10 we were playing one day . . .

 If you don’t know, HORSE is a basketball game, usually played between two players, where player 1 makes a shot, and player 2 has to make that same shot. If you make the shot, whatever shot you like, a lay-in or a long shot, then it’s your turn to shoot first again and your opponent has to make the same shot as you. If player 2 misses he gets a letter, first miss an H, second miss an O, and so on until you’ve spelled out HORSE, at which time the game is over and you’ve lost. If you don’t have much time you can play PIG; if you’re vulgar you can play the game by spelling out some obscene or nasty swear word. Unlike regular basketball, HORSE doesn’t require dry pavement to dribble on, or sidelines to keep you in bounds, no rebounding or assists, steals or traveling violations, it doesn’t demand anything other than a ball, a hoop, and two or more players.

That day, I’d never beaten Brad before, never, ever, E-V-E-R at HORSE, at PIG, or any other version of the game with any other word.

Truthfully, I’d never beaten Brad at anything athletic.

But that day I was up over Brad’s H-O-R-S with my H-O.

It was like a good joke, no it was like a great joke a perfect joke, a rare and nearly impossible and utterly unimaginably, divine joke.

I was beating Brad Bukowski— I’d never, ever thought that could happen.

Dry leaves skittered along the asphalt; the breeze blew in my face. My feet

tingled in my  athletic shoes

H-O-R-S

to

H-O . . .

“Your shot,” Brad said and tossed me the ball. I caught it, smiled, set up fifteen feet away, and launched my fade-away jumper . . .

Swish.

Brad grabbed the ball walked to my spot, took a few deep breaths, judged distance, wind, and humidity, took another deep breath, and finally let fly—

The ball almost went through but circled the hoop and rimmed out. That was E for Brad H-O-R-S-E.

After the final letter in HORSE, the loser gets to choose whether to take the shot again or make the winner repeat the shot making it a second time. It’s like having to win by two points in ping-pong or volleyball or tennis—a confident player usually tries the shot a second time, and Brad was nothing if not confident. But that day, a fifteen-foot fade-away jumper is not an easy shot, and Brad eyed the distance again and then, “Prove it,” he said, throwing me the ball.

I stood fifteen feet from the hoop. That length of jumper, much less a fade-away jumper, is a hard shot; Brad felt sure that I’d miss.

But just then a Robin flew over our heads twittering, his eye staring straight into my eyes. It looked like he was smiling, and the gray clouds moved so slowly that I was sure the sky, silent, watched us—

I Twisted the leather rock gently in my hands and didn’t let myself think about . . .

You have to make it. You have to win. Nothing in the world can stop you now for once in this single moment you can’t lose, not this time . . .

No, all those thoughts came later . . . I took the ball, held it lightly in my skinny fingers, glanced at the hoop and I leapt, rising high into the air raising my arms above my head as though offering this shot to God, and I faded away like a man falling from a high cliff, like a song’s last words, like the laughter at the end of the funniest joke you’ve ever heard . . .

And from this fading, falling, flying arc, I shot.

There was a tiny click as the ball nicked the metal hoop yet slammed straight

through!

All the universe fell silent except for the ball bouncing once, twice, a third time, and a fourth, each bounce smaller than the one before it Bounce---bounce--bounce-bounce-bounce-bounce until it lay, motionless, on the dark ground.

“You win,” Brad said, trying to sound relaxed and cool.

Then, quickly “Wanna play again?”

I almost said, sure, but the word caught in my throat “Nah, I gotta get home.”

“Really?” Brad asked I was almost certain I could hear the pain, pain, P-A-I-N in his voice.

“Yeah,” I said, staring right at him. I added, “We’ll play again tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Brad said feigning calm, faking indifference, “See you tomorrow then,” he said, his tone full of misery.

I answered “Okay.”

I held my smile until I was out of his sight, and then the breeze blew in my hair; my feet danced as I walked six inches above the earth. My heart pounded with the strangest rhythm, I’d ever felt: pride, joy, victory—

I was only ten years old but already I realized that nothing, nothing, n-o-t-h-i-n-g—nothing would probably ever taste as sweet as this ever again.

Yep, so back on that day I was 10, and I was working on King Jock Plan ‘A’. 

Let’s just say, that didn’t turn out real good . . .