Thanks

The end of March Madness seems like a good time to write about the best basketball player to never play in the NCAA.

In the fall of 1984, Ben Wilson was the top ranked high school prospect in the country.  Although he never signed a letter of intent, some speculate that he would have chosen to attend the University of Illinois.  Considering that he may have played alongside the likes of Nick Anderson and Kendall Gill during their historic 1989 season, such a decision would have most likely affected the fortune of the fighting Illini for years to come.

Tragically, as many of you know, Ben Wilson did not play basketball for the U of I, or for any other college. Ben was shot and killed in the early afternoon of November 20^th, weeks before the start of his senior-year season at Simeon High School. 

Ben Wilson was 17-years old.

Now, this story could serve as a starting point to discuss the brevity of life, or the sporadic nature of violence in our society, or perhaps about the loss of tremendous potential.

All of these are worthy subjects, but instead I want to use this column to address another topic on the minds of many people in spring:  their dirt, or more specifically, the dirt in their gardens. 

Before that, though, some thanks are in order.

First and foremost, I need to thank Grant Wolfe.  Grant is a sophomore in one of my English classes.  He plays a little basketball himself, and in his spare time he wrote a research paper about Ben Wilson.  I used information from his paper to start my own.  Thanks, Grant. 

I also need to thank my wife.  Writing takes solitude, which is a rare commodity for a father of two small children.  However, every couple of weeks, my better half makes sure I have a couple undisturbed hours at home to finish these biweekly tomes.  Thanks.

And, while I’m feeling grateful, I should also thank some of my co-workers.  I work with some exceptional people who often share resources, and without their help, I honestly would not have the time to write anything I would be comfortable sharing and still do my real job.  So, thank you, EHS B-Wingers.  (You know who you are.) 

So, at present count, we have about a half-dozen people who helped write this column.  That way, if you don’t care for it, at least it’s not all my fault.

Returning to dirt, then, those who want to grow something out of it usually know enough to put something back in.  We cannot just take nutrients out of dirt.  In order to grow anything worth eating, we must return something to it, be it in the form of natural or synthetic fertilizers.

This is true in any relationship, whether a marriage, a basketball team, or a rather complicated 21^st century society.  Marriages that try to exist without giving end in divorce; teams that try to function without giving don’t win.  A society that chooses not to put resources back into itself will eventually collapse, or, at the very least, be no longer recognizable.

In our own society, there is a dangerous trend in which those with very large sums of money and resources continue to move further and further away from the rest of us.  That might be fun and all in the short term, but such wanton drift is not sustainable.  A point will come when the garden won’t grow.

In other words, people must give back.  We must all give back, whether it’s a public thank you in a daily newspaper or a pint of blood at a community blood drive, whether it’s a backpack full of food for the weekend or the creation of a job that provides a dignified, living wage.

Although Ben Wilson was only seventeen when he was killed, his larger-than-life legacy is that of a much more seasoned individual.  According to those who knew him most personally, it was not even his athletic ability that made him truly special.  It was his character.

Recalling how people from his neighborhood would gravitate toward Ben after he began to garner national attention, an old friend pointed out that the superstar gave to them exactly what they wanted and needed at the time:  his respect.  “Now this is Ben Wilson. All-American, after the Nike camp, the No. 1 player in the nation at the time, but he listened. He listened to people out of respect.”

Respect.  Time.  Energy.  Soak these down deep into any relationship worth keeping, because, unlike a garden, unlike in sports, our next season is never a guarantee. 

Fight

Many years ago, well before the advent of Bully Free Zones, a classmate kicked me in the face.

More accurately, he lifted me up off the ground, turned me upside down, and tried to pummel my head into the playground gravel.  He attempted a wrestling move known as a pile-driver.  It is banned now, but, unfortunately for me, was very much in vogue on late 1980s elementary school playgrounds.  Because we hadn’t rehearsed like they did on the WWF, the move was less than well-executed.  My face clumsily scraped against his knee and then his foot before reaching the ground, kind of making it a kick.

 Kicking, pile driving, though, it’s all semantics, because the result was basically the same.  I earned a terrific-looking face scrape, one that seemed intense enough to merit some advice from my sixth grade teacher:  “You can’t let him get away with that.”

And so I didn’t.  Out on the same playground a few days later, I sucker-punched my assailant in the face.  When he tried to counter-attack, my friends joined, bumping into him, knocking him off balance, allowing me to throw in a few more uninspiring pelts against his head.

It was ugly, unheroic, and fairly effective.  He cussed at me some more, but he never touched me again.  We both ventured toward different recess pursuits.

My wound healed.

Last week, some kid on the bus grabbed my daughter’s book bag.  She is in Kindergarten and thus reacted to the event in much the same way one might expect: she cried.  The impromptu thief gave it back fairly quickly, but clearly the episode shook her up.  When I asked her what was wrong, she told me, between sobs, what had happened.

Now, the gut instinct, the parental impulse, was to chase down the bus, find the culprit, and throw his book bag out the window.  Fortunately for my career and self-respect, I remained seated.

I remained seated and instead held my little girl who, up to that afternoon, did not know she lived in a world where big kids sometimes take things from little kids for no good reason.  I held my little girl who is growing up much too quickly, and after a while I gave her some advice.

“If he takes it again, don’t cry.  Stand up and shout.  Tell him very loud to give it back.  Yell until someone hears you.”

She is six and wears a great deal of pink, and thus such a scene may incite more laughter than actual trembling, but at least a point will be made.

Will it work?  Who knows?  School buses are full of mean kids.  Life, too, but of all the strategies to deal with such people, it seems that crying about it is just about the least useful.

Before continuing, it makes sense to return briefly to my sixth grade fisticuffs, if only for clarification.  I am not a tough guy.  That weak, lopsided little boxing match out on the playground did not turn me into some aggressive, action-hero type eager to run and jump my way through the world.  In fact, I haven’t thrown a real punch since that day, and I try to avoid confrontation as much as I can. 

Thus, the lesson my sixth-grade teacher taught me was not that “violence can solve your problems.”

His lesson was much more profound and much more useful.

“You solve your problems.”

Looking back, it occurs to me that as the recess monitor, he could have stepped in.  He could have kept a close watch on us.  He could have set up a meeting between the bully and the bullied and perhaps even the bystanders, and all of our parents in between. 

But instead he just shook his head and told me, “You can’t let him get away with that.”

In other words, “solve your problem, even if it means sucker punching it and getting your buddies to help out.”

He did not give me this advice because he thought vengeance ought to be mine.  He told me this because, as an adult with some decades on him, he knew I had a problem to solve and ignoring it would likely make it worse.

We spend a lot of time and energy trying to stop bullying, and that is a good thing.  Bullying is bad.  Bullies are jerks, and, due to the advent of social media, they can also be jerks twenty-four hours a day.  There are students in my class who come to school miserable and leave even more so, often because of bullies who are practiced enough not to get caught.

Unfortunately, bullies aren’t going away.  Some people are just mean.  Putting up signs that say “Bully Free Zone” won’t actually put an end to bad behavior, just as our various “wars” on drugs, poverty, or terror have met with less than stellar results, as well.  Part of problem-solving should also be problem-dealing.  For example, you can’t “solve” bad weather, but you can “deal” with it by wearing boots. 

Thus, it’s unrealistic to expect my daughter’s bus, or her school, or her life, to be a bully free zone.   Because of that, it would also be unrealistic of me—and short sighted—not to give her strategies to “deal” with the people in her life who will try to take her stuff.

Maybe not everyone will have to suffer the bad end of a pile driver, but we all get our faces scraped one way or another.

Wrestle

As my son and I came to a gliding stop at the bottom of the hill, a puff of snow fell off a nearby branch.  Despite all the white around us, despite the chill and the wet in our gloves, I was reminded that winter was actually almost over.

Another winter over.

Another season spent.

After a long morning of trying to get all our taxes in order and the house cleaned and laundry put away, I was again reminded to slow down.

Be patient.

Smile at my children growing up like magic before my eyes.

Later that afternoon we all went back outside to play in the snow.  We just kind of hung out for a while, all bundled up, throwing snowballs.

The girls went in, and we wrestled in the snow until we just couldn't handle the cold in our gloves any more.

We wrestled out in the backyard until dusk.