Knowing Which Side You're On

My mother’s brothers were all handsome men. Even in that group, though, Uncle Jesse stood out. Curly hair. Sparkling brown eyes. A dazzling smile. And even nicer than he was handsome.

So it must have set the hearts of all the girls at Francisco High School to fluttering when he ran out onto the basketball court in the tight little shorts and skimpy singlet basketball players wore in the 1920s.

The problem was this: he wasn’t a very good basketball player. So he never got into a game. Until that night when all the other players had fouled out. To have five on the floor, the coach had to put Jesse in.

The score was tied, and the clock was down to the last minute.

“Don’t touch the ball,” the coach told Jesse. “Just stand there in bounds.”

Jesse did as he was told. But then the unthinkable happened. The ball went astray. It landed in his hands. What was he to do? The thing any player would do; he went for the basket.

He couldn’t dribble, but somehow he kept the ball going—one, two, three bounces toward the basket. The other players were chasing him. The crowd was yelling. He could see the clock down to its last second. He lofted the ball. It went through the net. The crowd went wild.

Then, though, Jesse realized it was the wrong crowd that was cheering him. It was on the visitors’ side of the gym. He looked at the scoreboard. He had won the game, but for the wrong team.

After high school, Uncle Jesse went on to a distinguished career in the Navy, as a pilot and flight instructor.

My mother’s family liked to tease a lot. So whenever there was a reunion and Jesse was present, the story of the errant basket was repeated many times. I was a teen-aged basketball player then myself. I could feel the embarrassment I was sure Uncle Jesse must have felt.

“How can you stand that, hearing that story?” I asked him.

He looked serious.

“All I did was make a mistake, Johnny,” he said. “You’ll make a lot of those in life, and sometimes it will help the wrong team. Maybe even win a game for them.”

Then he gave me that dazzling smile.

“But I always knew which side I was on,” he said.

In the years of winter, I’ve been around long enough to make a lot of mistakes, and sometimes they’ve helped the wrong team. Maybe even won a game or two for them. But the season isn’t over, and I still know which side I’m on.