Bertie + Basketball = ker-plop

Being a tall-ish gal, I am often asked if I played basketball. I respond with an affirmative and hope the question ends without a tag-on like, “let’s play sometime.” The truth is, by george, I’m no good. I can’t dribble worth beans, I’m afraid to jump (after several broken and sprained ankles…), I have a silly habit of shutting my eyes at important moments, and (worst of all) I have a horrible habit of giggling when I do something dumb (note the word “habit”—it’s a hard one to break).

I “led the basketball elective” at camp for a couple of weeks for a couple of summers. Yeah, I think it sounds impressive, too, but I just stood on the sidelines, clapped, whistled, and yelled “Foul!” and “Nice try!” like a champ. I rarely touched the ball because all the campers would know that I was a phony. More impressive yet, I can say that I played in high school. Hmm…it was for 1 year, and I got fouled out a lot (oops), got several bloody noses, gave a couple peeps bloody noses, and all in all was a disaster on the court. But, “being tall-ish,” the coach played me way more than I was worth. One time, I had an amazing rebound and shot down the court. I have no clue whose foot I tripped on (I really hope it wasn’t mine!), but I went down…hard. When I got up, everyone backed away. Since the ball bumped into someone else, I didn’t think it would be a double dribble, so I kept scurrying down the court. When everyone stepped back, I thought it was because genius skills were so intimidating and overpowering. Well…I busted my chin open, and everyone was grossed out by enough blood to make a white jersey red. (AND my stitches made me look like I had a beard).

All of this to say, by george, I’m no good. I had the very clever idea, however, of buying a ball here in order to play with some youth-types. We’ve played a couple of times now at, I believe, the only park which was donated by Belgium (3 of us, then 6, then 10). Although I thought that I was starting to move past my absurd self-absorption when I play, drat, I’m now, once again, the girl with little skill who falls a lot. I rolled my ankle on Brenda’s shoe (can’t I have a better story?) and am now hobbling with a serious cankle. It was a bit of a surprise to me to twist it because I thought that my ankles would be super duper strong with all of the uneven surfaces to walk on.

On the bright side: 1) I learned the word for “hurt” last Wed., and I can finally remember the word for “ice” (because it sort of sounds like ankle); 2) I’ll remember to wear my ankle brace next time; 3) I don’t think I hurt anyone; 4) it could be a lot worse; and 5) we had frozen veggies in the freezer. :)