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the excitement of recognizing someone he had Neither my uncle nor anyone else could 10
hoped was a famous athlete. The dribbling undo my mother’s incantations.
motion his downward palms made gave it away. “Any fool can dribble a damned ball! If you skill workshop
“Whoever you think I am, I am not,” I sighed. “I break your leg, then what? You take your ass
don’t play for anybody’s basketball team.” to school. With your mind you can become a
This was a phrase I had on a save/get key in genius. Forget a damned ball.” /
my brain. I dreamed instead of someone stop- I hated these long verbal rants. For thirty
ping me on the streets and saying, “Aren’t you years as a schoolteacher in the St. Louis P ublic
that guy who does those great front-page articles Schools, she saw hoards of young boys, often
for The Salt Lake Tribune?” I would have gladly without fathers in the home, sidelined when
owned that kind of recognition. basketball, football and baseball dreams evap- Essential Elements of Narrative
orated. Life’s path hadn’t provided those boys
*
Between the ages of 9 and 16, my shoe size 5 with many options. Too many of them wound
and my age corresponded. Neighborhood kids up incarcerated or in cemeteries early.
called me “feets.” “I’ll tell you one thing, when you turn
In the summer of 1980, right before I turned eighteen you’ve got two choices,” my mother
fourteen, I stretched up to a gangly six-feet. The said. “You’re either going into the Army or
world expected this body to have a certain agility you’re going to college, but you’re gonna get
with a basketball. your ass out of my house.”
I didn’t. I knew she meant it. Our parents split when my
For weeks my Uncle Tan and I stood out- sister and I were small children. With no daddy in
side on the black tar playground at Scullin the picture, my mother’s tongue fathered me.
Elementary School and practiced stealing, drib- By the time I got onto the University of 15
bling and slam-dunking an orange ball. “Now, Missouri’s campus where I studied journalism
let’s me show you how to do this again,” he and fell in love with Victorian literature, I had
would say over and over. developed a retort for the basketball question,
I couldn’t hide my ambivalence. Eventually “Do you play miniature golf?”
we agreed to drop these practice sessions. My And it took me thirteen years of working
relief was enormous. as a newspaper writer and another ten years of
* teaching college before I realized something.
My mother was right.

Getting Started activity

Write a brief response to the questions that follow and share with a partner afterward.
• When have you been asked to read or write narratives in school?
• Typically, what are the topics of the narratives you have been assigned in school?
• In general, what you do like or not like about reading or writing narratives?

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