Thursday, April 2, 2015

Hanging on by your fingertips, the fate of a fan.

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Y'all know that I enjoy basketball as much as an elephant loves an ankle-deep pond, as much as a toddler can't leave alone an empty carton, as much as a dog I saw online loved to stand on his/her hind legs at an upright piano, accompanying the rhythmic howls that hearing the tinkling piano keys induced in said dog.

When my adored Portland Trail Blazers play their hearts out, I'm with them. When the game starts to go awry, I'm with them. Often, they right the ship and proceed to win. At times, it goes down to the last tenths of a second, so everyone in the building hangs on until the outcome is known.

Wednesday night in the Moda Center against the Los Angeles Clippers, the guys couldn't quite right the ship, no matter how everyone hung on, hoping. We lost by four points. Four rotten, no good, dadgum points. After leading at some point by 19, after accomplishing a 63% field goal percentage in the first quarter, after having 23 rebounds in the first half. We lost. And I'll always use the plural pronoun because I know beyond doubt that the team considers the fans essential to their effort.

Normally when I come home from the games, I turn on the TV and watch/listen to the local basketball commentators discuss what happened; I have a good time giving them what for here in my living room when I don't agree with their analysis. Last night after that loss, I couldn't do it. This fan was that sad.

To divert myself from dwelling on the game and while I worked on this blog post, I decided to watch a show on GAC called "Flippin' RVS" because the trailer--definitely NOT an RV, I know from personal experience that it is a HOUSE trailer--which starred in the episode is a 1950 Spartan Royal Manor. When I was a little girl my family owned and loved a 1951 Spartan Royal Mansion, brand new and our home across many of these United States, due to my Daddy's job building water cooling towers which cool water for industrial purposes. A job took three months or less; we lived in at least 25 states over seven and a half years. My brother and I count ourselves blessed that our parents who grew up in a little Mississippi country town had the guts to take to the road and make a life for the four of us. I was three, Howard was three months, Daddy was 27, Mama was 24. There were no interstates in those days--we road state highways from town to town, found the trailer park nearest Daddy's job site, parked in a vacant space and made our life there. My parents took me to north Mississippi to live with my aunt and uncle's family for the first grade; they didn't do that with my brother. I have no memory of why that decision was made and my parents are both gone now, so I cannot ask. I do remember that Howard had a harder time learning when the next school would be on a different skill than the one he'd been trying to learn at our last town. Having the entire nine months in one place paid off for me. No matter, Howard and I, like I said, count ourselves blessed and still love to go when we get the chance.

Anyway, I got off the subject, but thanks for reading my meanderings.

Turns out that my reference to fingers in the title of this blog could be interpreted as foreshadowing an injury to one of our bench players who contributes as much as he can considering the limited minutes he's on the court. Here's the Blazers' tweet: X-Rays confirm Portland F Dorell Wright sustained a fracture of his 4th metacarpal bone tonight in his left hand. His status is TBD. Phooey.

2 comments:

William Kendall said...

That's the sort of loss that's a wound in the heart.

Randy said...

I think going to a game with you would be so much fun!