Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #15 Memories of Basketball

Basketball was my favourite sport to play when I was in high school.

I was on the Grade X, XII and XII teams. My dad came to see me once.

I remember seeing him sitting on the sidelines at Western Canada High School. He left at half time.

I think he went to every game Earl played.  That doesn't matter to me, though I do remember it.  What matters is the thrill of seeing him at that game for me.

At any rate, I loved playing the game.  I didn’t seem to need an audience.

I asked my mother if I died, would she have me buried in my basketball uniform. I believed in a very literal reading of “coming forth on the first day of the resurrection”, thinking I would appear in the clothes I was buried in.

I wanted to be ready to play a game on the day of the first resurrection.

I do love basketball.  I have never regreted any basketball game that I watched my kids play.  Nor any kind of sports.

I followed all of them from Grade VI; some into games in high school; I watched one play in a National Championship Game on TV.

Even now I can’t think of a lovelier evening that watching high school or university basketball games.

And junior high games are especially delightful.

Ballet on the court. Beautiful.

Arta