Take Me Out, Coach!
I dribbled inbounds. From outside the court boundary where the referee handed me the basketball for the throw-in, I just took off as if someone had lifted the gate to let the ponies run. Understandable for a third grader – maybe – but I wasn’t in third grade. I was in COLLEGE! My faux pas hit me and the man in the striped shirt with a whistle around his neck at precisely the same time – about two steps inside the baseline when I turned back to toss him the ball. Before he could even engage in the mechanics to illustrate the call, I had begun jogging toward the bench while verbally and demonstrably urging my coach to take me out - as if I was the only one in the arena who thought that was a good idea. Surprise to none, I got no argument from him.
It was the only thing I could think to do at the time that might keep me from bleeding out.
“Save my team from me!” my insides cried. But I was the one who was rescued by the bench. I could not continue playing with the weight around my neck. The reprieve kept me from drowning in a sea of my own shame.
We’re all collectors, even if we swear we’re not. Everybody has a pile. Or a drawer. Or a closet. Or a room. A place where everything we’re not sure what to do with goes.
Unintentional accumulation. But stockpiling, just the same.
Sometimes we collect on purpose. Baseball caps, books, tools, Limoges Boxes, sneakers, Marvel comics, shot glasses, vinyl albums (like Harvey on Suits), Fostoria Crystal, coins. We amass what makes us happy, seemingly unable to get enough of what we love. Or sometimes just because we once began to gather… we still can…so we still do. A habitual practice that reminds us of who we think we are.
We hang on to stuff. It’s part of our molecular western make-up. As inhabitants of the land of more-than-necessary, we’re simultaneously unaware of how much we have and terrified of what we don’t. So we accumulate. We keep things we mostly don’t need in space we mostly don’t have. Crap piles up.
And not just on our shelves and on our walls. Objects aren’t the only things we hoard.
Oddly, we have a tendency to internally hang on to things that we don’t like. We tally disappointments, sleights, perceived wrongdoings and put them in a box. They aren’t purposefully stored away like the championship trophies we neatly display behind the glass, but we clutch them just the same. What hurts gets shoved into a spare room to live another day.
The drawers of our minds are also reserved for others’ stumbles - a place where we can house their past behavior for future use. Not unlike that album cover that Stevie Nicks once signed or the shot glass from the Hard Rock Café in Boston, what our friends and family did or didn’t do is in the vault for proof. That time our spouse forgot our anniversary, or our boss responded poorly, or our children failed to act the way they should are safely packed away in bubble wrap. When we’re less than our best selves, we drag them out as verification. The stuff we’ve saved up serves as evidence for whatever case we want to make. It’s not intentional - hoarding rarely is - but it still makes a mess of things.
I won’t ever forget dribbling the ball inbounds, though (for whatever reason - a good coach… kind-hearted teammates… a sparse, forgiving crowd) I didn’t put it in the box labeled “keep.” Remembering is not the same as holding on.