Loneliness Part 2

So I didn't sleep that night. I packed up a bag with pretty much what I owned - which still fit into a backpack - and I gathered all the books to go sell back to the bookstore in the morning and then I would go with the Family to get on a bus to Boston.

The truth novelistic approach to telling a good story, would be to sneak the back story in way ahead of time so that by the time you get to the end it all makes sense. But blog writing isn't preplanned - at least mine isn't. So here's what you need to know: I'm very tall. In grade school and high school (in Indiana) there was a whole lot of pressure for me to do sports. I wanted in the worse way to play Little League (we played sand lot ball and I was a bat boy for the IU Baseball Team) but then you had to try out and they didn't want me. I didn't have the skills. My brother took me out back one afternoon, propped up a spare tire against the garage and told me to throw at the whole until I got good. And went away. My father and brother didn't spend any more time with me than they had to. So I knew nothing about any sports. High School came and they wanted me for football and basketball. I cried the first time I suited up because I didn't even know how to put the football padding stuff on and everyone was already on the field. I practiced and sat on the bench and went in about a total of five minutes and I quit after one season. Basketball wasn't much different.You were expected to know how to play. I didn't. I ran back and forth on the court and tried to rebound. I was one of the two guys left over after they formed the 1st, 2nd & 3rd strings. I had watched my brother on the team all through High School and he only got to play a little bit his Senior year. So I quit basketball too. And then for the next three years I was actively recruited to play, and some guy even offered me a chance for the U of Kentucky team because he spotted me working in a restaurant. I told him, he wouldn't make the offer if he saw me play.
To be honest, I didn't touch a basketball again until ten years ago, some twenty years later.

So I went to the bookstore in the morning and sold all my books. The guy was apologetic about the money he could give me, mostly because I had bought most of them from him. I ranted about running off.

So I took the street car and made the house a little before lunch. The guy I had made friends with told me that they had made arrangements for the bus and they would take me over in a little while and I wasn't to bring anything other than my clothing and toiletries and I wasn't to have any contact with anyone outside the Family.
I thought that my mother would need my number and where I had gone, but they said there was plenty of time for that later.

Then, as we sat and had a sandwich, the guy began to tell me how much he liked Mel Lyman and how he was sure I would connect with him too. Mel was real interested in getting his two boys into basketball. Did I know how to play basketball? I told him I knew a little. The guy said he had tried to help teach them, but they really needed a coach who knew the game.

'This is why you wanted me to enlist?' I wanted to ask but didn't.

I did tell him I wasn't any good at sports, and I wasn't really interested in doing sports and all of this was beginning to seem really stupid.

The folks were getting worked up again. Why was I jerking their chain? I excused myself, picked up my bag and left. I went back to my room and lay on the bed all weekend and got up and went back to my job Monday morning. The books were the real stupid part.

http://www.trussel.com/f_mel.htm

This is the link, if you are really interested in seeing how nutzo old Mel Lyman and his Family were. To think, I could have taught basketball to his kids. I bought one of his books afterward, "The Mirror At The End Of The Road" because I thought I might want to fictionalize the experience.

Maybe its not too late.