More Hoop Dreams

Awakened at this odd hour after another dream ..... this one not so bizarre (well on second thought) ..... but incredibly outlandish. 

I dreamed about playing basketball again. And I've had a few other 'hoop dreams' in the past but not like this one.

Walking to the front door of the Salem Armory Auditorium, overtaken by memories of days long past, and wondering if I'm going to have to pay to get in, there was also the realization that I didn't have the proper shoes and I'd likely be slipping and sliding, if not spraining an ankle. (Or two?)

I walk on the court, like so many times before and like on dozens if not hundreds of different courts around the area and there's ten guys warming up for the other team, mostly guys known facially from city league games in the past ..... and three guys near the bench for our team, two old teammates and one guy known from other activities but not a former teammate. He tells me that he wants to see me shooting my jump shot and all I can think is it's been years and my body has forgotten the coordination and cooperation of parts required to get that perfect and picturesque jump shot .....

..... and I'm also thinking. "Oh shit, we only have three guys and me and I'm going to have to play the whole game after having not played for at least twenty years and I'll have no stamina ..... AND NO SHOES!!

And then I learn that this team has already played fourteen games ..... (where the hell was I for those first fourteen?) ..... Heck the average city or church league season would run ten games. And then I look around and there's maybe fifteen guys in our layup line and I'm relieved that I'm not going to have to play in these traction lacking shoes yet upset at the same time because I'm not going to get to play much .....

..... and if there's anything that I've always been in real life it's this mass of conflicting emotions .....

..... Then I notice standing behind me in the layup line is Rick Adelman and I'm suddenly all like: "Hey remember me??"  ..... Of course in real life, I never played on the Chemeketa teams that he actually coached before going onto slightly bigger things, like coaching in the NBA and devising plans to slow down Michael Jordan and the only other time I was within shouting distance of him was when I reffing a youth basketball jamboree, where every 3rd and 4th grade team in the city was in one gym, playing short games and constantly rotating among five or six courts, and I look to the sideline during hour four or five of that Saturday and there he is coaching his son or daughters team ..... and that was probably 40 to 45-ish years ago, the mid or early 1980's, a different century ago but heck, he ought to remember me from that.

..... And as I'm still trying to relearn my jump shot and the timing and choreography of the layup line, I suddenly wake up, happy when I realize that I don't have to run out and spend hundreds of dollars on new shoes. 

Well I actually do need new shoes but not basketball shoes.