Un Age Certin

I began my quest to dunk largely to escape the reality of my advancing age. That was my plan. But as the saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Indeed, throughout this journey, circumstances have thrown my age back in my face like a baboon hurling its feces.


To be fair, my journey has not been an unrelenting hailstorm of baboon shit (that's the last time I'll revisit that image, I promise). In the beginning, learning to dunk had exactly the desired effect. I felt like a kid. Not so much because my body was rejuvenated by the workouts, but because I was joining a group of people who had been training together for months. I was the new guy. The new kid. I didn't know the ropes. I had a lot to learn. And there is something about the role of student that makes one feel young. A student, after all, must be open, willing, trusting, and all of these are qualities we are most likely to have when we are young, before age and experience have closed us off, made us wary and put us on our guard. So when we slip back into that student role, we slip back in time a little bit as well. I suspect that may be part of the reason--other than the obvious one of having time on their hands--why retirees take so many classes.


Other things reminded me of my antiquity, however. Early in my training, it was suggested I take a supplement, Triflex, designed to strengthen one's joints against possible injury. One's old, creaky joints. I'd never given my joints a second thought when I was younger, but now doctors and friends constantly cautioned me to be careful with my elbows, shoulders and knees. My God, you'd think I was held together with chewing gum. I appreciated their concern but they seemed to be forgetting something--I wasn't old. Or rather, I didn't want to be.

Also, Gil occasionally likes to predict which of his clients will achieve his dunk dream first. By the summer, I had made a lot of progress; I was grabbing the rim. Not just touching it, grabbing it, getting about four inches of my hand above the hoop. At the rate I was progressing, Gil figured, I would be dunking about the same time as J.C., a 17-year-old high school junior. I'm 6-foot-1, J.C. is 5-foot-7, yet we would be dunking at about the same time. So what was my handicap? It was unspoken but quite clear--the 33 years I'd spent on the planet before J.C. was even born.

Finally, while I was able to keep pace with the youngsters during the workouts, doing so took everything I had. I was panting, heaving and sweating like a beaten mule; meanwhile, the little bastards next to me were dabbing a bead or two of perspiration--there wasn't enough of it to call it sweat--from their unlined brows. This was the most vexing of the reminders of my age because it was the most definitive. The body just ain't what it used to be. I can push it, but at my age, it pushes back. It can only take so much.

It's late in the summer, I'm consistently grabbing the rim by this time, so close to dunking I've started to actually have dreams about it, and we're working out at USC on a morning that's ridiculously hot. It's the last exercise of the workout--I put the huge rubber bands around my waist and have to sprint about 50 yards while dragging a fellow dunk dreamer behind me. A feel a twinge in my left knee but don't think much about it until later that day, when the pain has gotten worse. I'd never had any trouble with my knees before, so this was disturbing. Weeks and weeks went by, but the pain wouldn't go away. I stop running, I stop jumping, Gil, ever ingenious, devises a workout that keeps my legs strong without stressing my knees, but the pain persists. I finally go in for an MRI and it shows a tear in my miniscus, a little strip of cartlidge that acts as a shock absorber in the knee.

Surgery would be required. The first doctor I talk with about it says typically people recover fully from such an operation, but I probably won't--because of my age. The baboon had wound up and thrown a nice steaming heap smack in the middle of my face (okay, so I broke my promise). I find a doctor who's prognosis is more hopeful, and I am currently awaiting surgery. I hope this doctor's right and I'll have enough of my miniscus left to get back to what I was doing. I want to resume my pursuit. I want to dunk. I'm tired of standing around watching while the other guys run, jump and strain. It only reminds me that I have broken down. And that is the reality about age that we can't escape. Things break down. It's just something we have to accept. But there's a line between acceptance and resignation; that's a line I'm not willing to cross.

So this whole thing with the knee is frustrating, but ultimately, it could end up adding something to the achievement when I dunk. Not only will I dunk for the first time at age 51, but I will do it on a surgically repaired knee. That ought to impress the hell out of Oprah.