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Bill Merrifield possessed elite hand-eye coordination.
While at Wake Forest he used that precocious skill to crack baseballs all over the stadium on his ascent to the ACC Player of the Year.
But he couldn’t beat me at ping pong. He tried several times. OK, he might have beaten me once but I was pretty pugnacious and adept at pong. Truth is, my hand-eye was damn good also, and I think it surprised Bill though my guess is he would never give me credit. The guy was too competitive to give anyone an edge ever.
Back in 1981, we would play pong after eating at “The Pit,” the Wake Forest cafeteria. I was a high school sports star like he was. But I got cut from the walk-on tryout. His situation was much different: a scholarship guy, a prime baseball recruit. I wish I had made that team because I believe I was good enough. All-State in baseball. But Wake Forest didn’t recruit me.
Bill’s college career soared on the athletic field. Mine plummeted in the classroom. I was a solid high school student but at the lower end of Wake Forest academic standards, a waiting list guy, and maybe the last one in my class to be accepted. Going to Wake meant I couldn’t compete in sports where I excelled in high school, so was left to compete academically where I ranked pedestrian at best in the brain-packed Wake Forest world.
So I watched Bill become great and get drafted into baseball’s minor league system. We were casual friends. I liked his sincerity, southern twang, and competitiveness.
In a random unplanned coincidence, we signed up for the same class sophomore year called “Aging in Modern Society” offered by the Sociology Department. A key part of the class was to visit a nearby nursing home to regularly visit an older person assigned to us. Bill would drive me to these meetings. We would spend
an hour or so with a man in his 80s we did not know and whose name I can’t
remember.
The point was to lift the man’s spirits and help him feel less lonely. We did what we could. During one of the last visits, the man got ornery. It was hard to watch. Bill and I didn’t know what to do. Our instincts told us to encourage the frustrated man, so we did that. I believe that was the last time we visited.
We were required to write a term paper summarizing our visits with reflections on what we had learned. “I never want to grow old,” was the final sentence of my paper.
I was 19 then. Now I’m 61.
I have grown old smack in that stage I never wanted to be. It’s not as bad as I envisioned, and I’m not in my eighties yet as the man we got to know, but soon enough I will be if I live that long.
It’s shocking how fast life goes. It feels in one way like five minutes ago Bill and I vied at ping pong and drove to the nursing home together. In actuality, it’s been something like a million
times longer than five minutes. In his life and mine, it seems a million things have happened.
A few years ago I visited with him during a Wake Forest alumni gathering before the ACC Championship in Charlotte. He was the same; people usually don’t change who they are at their essence. At ease being charming and a bit coy, a southern guy to his core with a bite when it comes to sports competition. I have always been struck by how normal he is and friendly despite being one of Wake Forest’s athletic royalty.
I bring all this up because I’m thinking about my age and mortality which isn’t imminent – hope not – but will get there sooner, perception-wise, than the time Bill and I whacked the ping pong paddles towards each other until now.
Cognizant of the end and that utterly mysterious and confounding thereafter, I am thinking about what I haven’t accomplished yet. I believe that is writing something that is truthful, or more truthful than everything else I’ve written. I have tried many times and it’s getting closer but still not there; holding back, afraid, not sure what the reaction will be. Writing honestly is risky to me, my family, my job, my reputation. Which is why it’s hard to go there. All that notwithstanding, here I am going there. I am afraid to die because I don’t believe I will go to Heaven because I have sinned too much. I also fear my life has been wasted trying to write well while falling short because I just don’t have the brain power and skill. I have the will and heart but not the talent just like I didn’t have the acumen to stand out in school at Wake Forest. So many damn smart people there. Still frustrates me there were few slackers; even they could get by on natural intellect. I am insecure about my brain’s ability compared with theirs and this seems to be something I will take to my grave. It may not be rational but it’s burned into my neurotransmitters or whatever part of the brain stores this.
So I continue to try to fix this phobia. I write more. I read more. Maybe that will solve it. I derive hope from reading books by established writers about writing. The latest is by Ray Bradbury titled Zen in the Art of Writing. This passage speaks to my heart and obsession with wanting to be validated as a writer by others.
It is a lie to write in such a way as to be rewarded by money in the commercial market. It is a lie to write in such a way as to be rewarded by fame offered to you by some snobbish quasi-literary group in the intellectual gazettes.
You want fame and fortune, yes, but only as rewards for work well and truly done. Notoriety and a fat bank account balance must come after everything else is finished and done. That means that they cannot even be considered while you are at the typewriter.
If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is – excited.
Helpful this is for my current mindset. What I write now must be open, vulnerable, and true to who I am and what I believe. What I believe is this is authentic writing because it’s what I want to write. It must be only what I like. And I do. It feels real. The excitement I feel is legitimate. I believe this matters and I want to matter at least to myself.
The zest I feel is knowing I could beat Merrifield in ping pong. It’s zestful to imagine Bill reading this and remembering our ping-pong duels and trips to the nursing home. Odd and random that was the two of us doing that during college because we signed up for the same class. I am excited to be writing this not because I hope he reads or or anyone else does. I’m excited because I am abiding by the Malcolm Gladwell-reported rule that to be good at anything you have to practice it for 10,000 hours. This piece of writing adds an hour or two toward that goal. Progress, even incremental, keeps me feeling purposeful and fulfilled. I like knowing I haven’t quit on myself as I did by not even trying out for the Wake Forest basketball team when I had a chance to walk on. I quit basketball because I didn’t accomplish all I envisioned in high school. I gave up on myself.
That won’t happen with writing. If I die trying to be a great writer, I will be satisfied. Quitting this will not be. No more giving up on what I want which is to do exactly this right now. Bradbury jazzes me with these words:
So again and again my stories and plays teach me, remind me, that I must never doubt myself, my gut.
This is not an exercise in doubt. This is about visceral commitment until I can’t type anymore, think anymore, or breathe anymore. This is true love for writing in all its mystery, peculiarity, and complexity. We do what we do and some people like what they do. Others can’t live without what they do and others couldn’t care less what we do. Bradbury writes:
Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with all his heart. Everything I’ve ever done was done with excitement, because I wanted to do, because I loved doing it. Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself.
The counter-intuitive concept about writing is not to think hard but not think at all, Bradbury writes.
Don’t think results in more relaxation and more unthinkingness and greater creativity.
Closing my eyes, I focus on not thinking. Breathing in and out, just nothingness. Let go. Let go of it all.
My mind is elsewhere now. This goes on, as the longest blog post in the history of The Real Demon Deacon Sports Site. Who cares? The Internet is infinitely large and undiscriminating. There’s room for this tome and a thousand more of them. Read on. Or don’t. You’ve come this far. The finish line is near, the ping pong match is just about done, old age an inch away.
There is only one type of story in the world, Bradbury writes. Your story. All good stories are one kind of story, the story written by an individual man from his individual truth.
My story is one of regret about my past athletic non-achievements at Wake Forest. My story is about finding out how overwhelmed a student I was competing against Wake Forest’s bright minds. They were gifted
students; I was a gifted athlete. It was a mismatch from the beginning. I turned down a Division 1 basketball scholarship to the University of Massachusetts because my father convinced me studying in college would be more important long term than playing college basketball. It all fell apart for a while at Wake Forest.
Thrashing about for something to do I was good at that wasn’t available for me, triggered pain, confusion, and embarrassment and, in the end, a tremendous learning experience that may have affected me so deeply that I’ve felt the desire to write about those emotions ever since. It’s not a choice I’ve made to become a writer as much as an emotional survival strategy. Bradbury writes:
The writer must ask himself: What do I really think of the world, what do I love, fear, or hate? And begin to pour this on paper.
What I really think is the working world is much more difficult to navigate and succeed in than I realized coming out of Wake Forest. A constant battle for money, power, and control is what I’ve noticed. People getting selfish about accumulating possessions. You see this often in the pettiness of home purchase transactions, quibbling over money. I hate that.
What I really think is life is too hard too much of the time. There are plenty of great times but it seems bad things interrupt and derail too many of the good times.
It’s scary getting old and being told by doctors to lose weight so you don’t damage your heart, knees, and ankles. Get high blood pressure, risk blood clots, and diabetes. All of this is so annoying.
What I really think is there are ways to cope with all the madness and one way is to find something you can’t live without and keep doing that. Filling my life with writing fights off the frustrations and fears of dying and regrets about what I didn’t accomplish in my past especially not playing on a college sports team.
What I really think is this is as honest as I can be.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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