This, despite having been voted the "Person Least Likely Ever To Be Called a [epithet deleted for the safety of friends who read the blog at work]"

Okay, we'll get to the anecdote behind the post title in a bit. (The censored epithet is "nigger;" I just figured having it at the top in bold, very large print might be too much of a shock to the corporate-political environment in which this blog from time to time is surfed.) First, however, a bit of more recent news. Long and brutal day yesterday dealing with minor car trouble on the Buick; all ended well but it didn't end until 11:00 p.m. or so, by which time I was exhausted. So I sat out on the landing and drank a glass of wine and a little bit of Scotch, chatting with Anya and our neighbor J.J. and the young man Myron who seems to spend as much time with my daughters as he can manage, though the no doubt romantic nature of his intentions has not yet been, to my knowledge, announced. (The Troika will probably be honked off by that last clause, but, yo, dyevochki, I was once a guy Myron's age, and you never have been and never will be, and if you want to believe he doesn't have the hots for at least one of you then that's your prerogative but don't expect to sell me that particular bridge.)

And it was probably the wine and whiskey (having given up alcohol for Lent I'm out of practice plus I was, as I said, exhausted), but when Myron and J.J. started trash-talking each other about basketball I became aware that tonight was going to be one of those nights.

By "one of those night," I mean something very specific. I was a perpetual motion machine as a kid, whose social salvation from the near-unforgivable male faux pas of getting good grades (very effeminate, where I grew up, that was), was the fact that I was an Academic All-State basketball player who cracked the starting lineup on the varsity on the very first game in which I was eligible to play. Which is to say, I loved basketball and was very good at it within the inevitable limitations of being a scrawny and not terribly fast five-eleven white dude, and of course any first-rate athlete can tell you that athletics gives you something you just can't get anywhere else, at least once you've earned your way to a certain level of accomplishment.

But about fifteen years ago I went and did something stupid and fell off a house and did severe damage to my back, and now on the rare occasions when I can't help myself and find myself back on the court, fifteen minutes of basketball one day gets paid for by two subsequent days of being hardly able to walk. So I don't play very often now...but every so often, as I say, I just can't stand it and for a few minutes I get a ball in my hand and a player between me and the goal and I get just a taste of it, just for a few minutes, maybe once or twice a year. And then I go back to being old and broken-down.

So, last night the realization sank in that the court was calling and there was no point in resisting it, even though by now it was after midnight and I was, as I say, exhausted. So I asked Anya to bring me my basketball. Response the first: Papa is such a kidder, isn't that a funny joke. Response the second: Papa, you can't really be serious, that's really stupid, how much have you had to drink? Response the third, resignedly: Okay, Papa, here's the ball you asked for.

I really just wanted to shoot a few free throws; I didn't challenge Myron or J.J. or anything, just quietly took the ball and headed off, alone, for the court. The unlit court, that is. Headed for the slick, wet concrete court through the misting rain, that is. (In other words, Anya's second reaction was eminently understandable.) But it seems that Anya then went and told Natasha (who loves basketball), "Natasha, you gotta see this, Papa is going off to play basketball right now," and of course once Anya and Natasha were headed for the basketball court Myron's attendance was a foregone conclusion, and J.J. tagged along as well...and so I found myself in a game of twenty-one, and resigned myself to getting beat. Not by J.J.; I'm three inches taller than he is and he's too young to know any defensive techniques that I don't know how to counter. But Myron is young and athletic, and I'm only good for about five minutes of defense before the pain starts to set in, and my jumper's no longer reliable enough for me to run off a quick twenty-one points in less than five minutes.

But as it turned out, I won after all. I had forgotten about the position Myron was in. Let's see, here you are with these two girls, at least one and probably both of whom you want to impress -- but you've gotten yourself into a basketball game against their decrepit old dad whom you know they like a lot. Is that a lose-lose situation or what? If the old guy beats you...oooh, major blow to the whole young-athletic-muscular-stud persona you've been working on. But if you go in and abuse the old guy, that's like picking on a little kid in front of girls, and besides, you'd really prefer for him to like you.

So I thought Myron played it pretty well. He played enough defense on me to keep me from just standing outside and shooting set shots, and once he realized I knew what I was doing and knew how to protect the ball he had fun seriously trying to steal the ball off my dribble. And after I jumped out to a quick 12-2 lead and he adjusted to my skill level, he played hard enough to get himself back in the game and catch up. The only thing that did him in was the fact that he assumed from my first few shots that I couldn't hit the extras from the top of the key, unaware that that was my signature spot back in the day; and so when I sighted it in and suddenly went on a five-of-six streak on the one-pointers, the game unexpectedly ended before he could adjust his strategy. Here he had thought it was at least a four- or five-possession game and the next thing he knows it's over in two possessions.

So he called for another game. Ah, but one of the advantages of being forty-one is that (a) you're past the point of having to prove your manhood whenever challenged and (b) you know when to take the money and run, metaphorically speaking. So I politely declined the offer and made a beeline for a nice hot shower and a couple of Advil.

And you know what? I think I'll save the other anecdote (the one I got the post title from) for another day.

UPDATE: Come to think of it, it turns out I already told said other anecdote on the blog, here -- though I think I need to enhance it with a picture of just how white a dude I was and am (think standard white copy paper but with rather more glare in daylight), and will therefore append my original driver's license as soon as I can get it scanned in.