You Want to Do What?

When you decide at age 50 to dunk a basketball for the first time, you have to expect to take a certain amount of crap. I have taken a little, but, honestly, not nearly as much as I was expecting. My neighbor has been the worst offender. He likes to needle me by constantly asking if I’ve dunked yet when he knows damn well I haven’t. This routine amuses him tremendously. What amuses me is that my neighbor is prematurely bald.

My closest friend, John, whom I’ve known since high school, was not as supportive as I would have liked. At least not at first. At UCLA, which we also attended together, he majored in kinesiology, and when I told him I wanted to dunk, he reacted initially with a very swift, “It can’t be done.” Something about me being too old to develop the necessary fast-twitch muscle fibers. I didn’t know how to respond to this. John is, after all, a close friend (notice the subtle downgrade from “closest”), there’s a good chance he knows what he’s talking about, and he still has all his hair. To John’s credit, however, he soon picked up on how important this is to me and immediately began backpedaling. He is now firmly in my corner and once again my closest friend.

In attempting to do something like this at my age, it helps to have a wife who is understanding and patient. While we’re at it, let’s throw in beautiful, and now we have an accurate description of my lovely wife, Linda. This is her.

See what I’m talking about, fellas? The Dunk Dreams workouts tend to be lengthy and numerous, so Linda has been called upon to be incredibly flexible. She has answered the bell every time. Only occasionally have the cracks shown, such as the time I spent basically the entire day driving to and from San Clemente (over three hours round trip from our house) to workout with Gil, my trainer, on the Super Cat, a big beast of a machine used for squats and jump squats. She jokingly accused me of loving Gil more than I do her. I’m fond of Gil, but there is a line neither of us is willing to cross.

Now, there have been some benefits to Linda in all this. For one, she enjoys what the Dunk Dreams workouts have done to my body. It is, she says, lean and toned, without being obnoxiously bulky like a body builder’s. (In this, she knows whereof she speaks; she used to be an editor for “Shape” magazine, published by Joe Weider, who introduced her to a pre-“Terminator” Arnold.) Also, I think she appreciates that of all the ways a 50-year-old man could chase after youth, I have chosen something relatively unharmful to a marriage.

Nonetheless, I have found the quality of her support very moving. She’s really rooting for me. She has applauded my progress, rubbed salve into my sore muscles and never once scoffed at or belittled my quest; and, let’s face it, wanting to dunk is definitely scoff-worthy. She didn’t even laugh when I told her that when I finally do dunk, Gil is going to get us both on Oprah. Maybe it’s our 26 years together, or some kind of womanly wisdom, but she seems to have crawled inside my head and really understood as no one else has what this means to me. It has reminded me yet again--as if I needed reminding--why I fell in love with her in the first place.

Then again, maybe she just wants to meet Oprah.