by Evan J. Massey
“A lot of what I remember is fragmented. Memories come to me in pieces, morsels even. Though, rather than fret over my inability to fully recollect a single moment, it gives me the chance to stitch and sew numerous memories and moments together.”
Can include:
1. Death of all hoop dreams. 2. Nightmares of being dunked on in succession. 3. Awaking in a hot sweat, your arms shielding your face, crying out mercy. 4. Anger toward your JV point guard teammate—even after all these years—for getting his ankles broken, allowing the kid who dunked on you an open lane to your demise. 5. Unparalleled embarrassment when, after you got yammed on, your JV coach subbed you out. 6. Never being subbed back in. 7. Trading basketball for soccer, where the possibility of being dunked on is far less likely. 8. Increased rejection of pick-up games when friends invite you to hoop. 9. Decreased invitations to hoop. 10. Isolation. 11. Slow perishing of your basketball soul. 12. Watching nothing basketball-related for weeks, months. 13. Trashing the Adidas you were wearing at the time of the incident. 14. Striking an agreement with yourself to never again ball in Adidas. 15. Early retirement at age 16. 16. Feeling that maybe you had it coming. 17. Feeling, at the time, like life itself was dunking on you. 18. Conjuring the memory of your ex-stepmother, for no reason at all, lying to your Pops about you not opening the door for her when she locked herself out. 19. Your Pops believing her over you—his own flesh and blood. 20. A fist fight between you and your Pops. 21. Stuffing a backpack full of clothes and running away. 22. Decline in grades, injuring your chances at college straight out of high school. 23. Increased possibility of panhandling on a street corner with a sign: “I’ve been dunked on. Lost Everything. Anything helps.” 24. Mending your relationship with your Pops via email while on deployment to Afghanistan. 25. Mortared at midnight one night. 26. Debriefed in the morning that the Taliban mortared the basketball court. 27. Grieving over grave-deep craters from hoop to hoop. 28. Secretly being thankful that the chances of you being embarrassed on that court were suddenly very slim. 29. Researching what it feels like to be dunked on. 30. Experiencing emasculation. 31. Afraid to play one-on-one with anybody. 32. Dreading athletic inadequacy. 33. Irrational fears that even Tee—the old baller at the YMCA, who wore hulking, old school knee pads and perhaps lost his hops years ago—will dunk on you. 34. Confusion over the lack of trauma support groups for dunk victims. 35. Thoughts about starting one and naming it “Dunked-On Anonymous.” 36. Chances of posterization. 37. Thoughts that maybe that kid had a poster printed and said poster, to this day, still hangs in his bedroom. 38. Researching the first person ever to be dunked on. 39. May, because of a grainy black and white YouTube clip, cause you to settle on some puny player that Hall-of-Famer Bill Russell—who because of his overwhelming intensity used to throw up before games—completely jumped over and dunked on. 40. Figuring that said puny NCAA player might, perhaps thankfully, be forever unknown. 41. Deliberation that a dunk isn’t impressive unless you’re under 6’0. 42. YouTubing clips of Spud Webb, standing at 5'7, and Nate Robinson, 5’9, who’d spring a whole foot and a half in the air. 43. Thinking back, reluctantly remembering the kid who dunked on you was 5’9 or 5’10.
The other day, someone asked me something about my childhood. Sadly, I replied, 'I don't really remember.' It hurt to say. A lot of what I remember is fragmented. Memories come to me in pieces, morsels even. Though, rather than fret over my inability to fully recollect a single moment, it gives me the chance to stitch and sew numerous memories and moments together. The blank page absorbs these miniature memories and closely associated anecdotes. This concentrated accumulation allows me to assemble a more vivid and complete memory.
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Evan J. Massey is a US Army veteran who served his country in Afghanistan. His work can be found or forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Bat City Review, The Pinch, Indiana Review, Speculative Nonfiction, and various others. He holds an MFA from Virginia Tech and teaches Upper School English at The Rivers School.