I Asked God To Come and Get Me, But I am Too Uncool

Some of my favorite/worst memories of my childhood was waking up real early on Sunday mornings to go hear Dr. Lance Watson preach in Creighton. I would never have my hair combed by the time we would leave, so my momma would always drag the comb through my hair, almost making my scalp come off. Call it the first ever S-curl accident. Sometimes if we were a little early to get to church, me and my brother would get chicken biscuits from McDonald's. While we sped to church down 95 and across 64, listening to Momma Caesar I would steal my brother's hash browns for the extra saturated fat. There was this girl there at the 10am services, she had cornrows and braces like it was her first day out. She probably already knew how to shoot a stepback jumper, heavily contested. I never spoke to her, but she looks like a Jamillah. Oh, and there were a few kids from my school who went there and I would try to make eye contact but as soon as they looked up, I looked down. I always wondered where I got church shoes from. I felt like they always appeared and I never asked for them. I wish it worked that way for Gameboy Advance Cartridges. While we sat down, my momma would give me a crinkled dollar bill to hand-off to some old dude who smelled of moth balls. What was he chewing all the time? I always held on to the money plate longer than I needed too because it looked like his arthritis was starting to kick in. Whenever the music would play (there was a score for walking into the church to breathing in the church to squirming in the church to passing out in the church) I wanted to dance or any clap my hands. Never understood why I didn't do so, even to this day. It was a continuous struggle to get to church everyday but it was a spectacle when you got there. If I took one of my white friends with us like Adam or Alex, you would have thought we were watching a soap opera. Pastor rapping off bible verses, old ladies passing out, single mom's interpretation of snakes, drinking the blood and eating the flesh off of some dude you haven't seen but apparently is ubiquitous. And there were so many hats. I would be so proud to invite seasoning to their lives. And you swore you left refreshed and anew and accomplished as much as Nelson Mandela himself. You couldn't tell someone anything who just walked out of church, not a got-dern-ting. Saying bible quotes and giggling with your best friend named Brenda you saw twice a week. Once at bible study and another at the line at the Piccadilly's. The one at Southpark. Wait is it shutdown? Sometimes I would pay attention to the pastor to intentionally, like I would  be the next up there. Like Martin Luther or Allen Senior. T.D. Jakes would be my speech coach. Mase would serve as my financial adviser. Everyone from my 3rd grade class, family, and friends would be there. Screaming and hollering righteous and sweet sayings right up there at the pulpit, guiding someone to change their life. To see their mom or their kids again after too many years. God would tell me I was cool and said I had a seat with them at the gates because I was so cool for being patient. Jamillah would be there too.



Then I woke up.

"Unhappy" by Outkast has remained one of the songs played when I am normally, well, happy.

It Wasn't A Dream, It Wrulleeappen'd

Basketball will forever and always be in my life. Whether it be me as a little 10 year-old collecting any and every basketball card from the trading card aisles in Target; starting altercations during AAU tournaments because it was stimulating to me; or being in this whole separate community of potential JUCO all-stars that just wanted to waste time during those long summers in grade school.

Well let me be honest, I was never cut out to be a true basketball player. Yes I was mainly 6'2, 6'3 and had a firm muscular frame and Dennis Rodman-type caliber player, during most of high school but mentally I was out of it.

Basketball in high school for me was firmly about being accepted in a social circle. My first crush played on the girl's team, I wanted to be invited to parties, I wanted my brother (who was a D1 athlete) and dad to be proud of me, I wanted something to go back and relate to when I talk to other nigglets and my dad's brothers when we were just sitting around. And none of those things panned out how I wanted too because I honestly didn't want or need them to pan out in that way. I honestly had given up my dog so I could go hangout with people I don't even have as Facebook friends anymore.

But some of the more miraculous things happened from this sport. For years and years I recorded stats on every basketball player I could stuff in my little Jonny brain and would update them on my basketball video games on player's attributes and accolades. Surely enough, basketball was not the one thing my brother and dad wanted me to talk about all the time (of course we still gotta' talk our stuff). I met some of my favorite players like Ben Wallace, George Gervin, and Jeff Capel. I found my voice as a leader being the defensive anchor on my teams.

This seemingly simple-minded sport became a storybook to me, full of tales and heroes and villains. All of my jerseys, action figures, trading cards, ProAm games; missed dunks, completed dunks, game winners, broken ankles, broken bones, size-ups; long nights, long days, long weekends, long practices, long car rides...it is just a game. Nothing more, nothing less.

You may be born at a Level 98 Wizard basketball player or work hours and hours off and remain at a Level 2 Peasant basketball player. And if you are a Level 2 Peasant in basketball, you may easily enough re-imagine yourself as a Level 98 Wizard on an entire simulation made by other Level 2 Peasant basketball players that are Level 98 Wizard game developers.

Whatever happened on a basketball court for me was so impersonal and I didn't feel it on a spiritual or emotional plane at all. If I was getting after it on the offensive glass and pushing and shoving all of these massive players, getting dunked on by people 5, 6 inches taller than me, talking into their ear about their mommas', I turned that off instantly as soon as I put my slides back on. But you can imagine the culture that this game built that gives everyone dreams, hopes, stability, and a form of escapism. The passion that burns in their eyes, it may not burn in my mines.There was a passion of just trying hard and giving almost everything I had. If I gave everything I had to the game, what would I leftover for everything else?

Regardless, I will dunk on you.

"Basketball Jones" by various artists on Space Jam reminds me of the hoop dreams I never had,