Can I Sit with You?

Charles Ries

Age 14 at the time

I was a mediocre basketball player in grade school. If it weren’t for the fact that I reached my current height of 5’11” at 14, I would never have played at all. After my first season of seventh grade basketball and, despite my failings at baseball, I was determined to remake myself into a great athlete. I shot hoops all summer. I ran laps around the mink yard. I lifted the weights Jim used to prepare himself for high school football. When my farm chores ended, my training regimen began. As always, I was tireless in my pursuit of perfection.

But despite long hours spent in athletic self-improvement, I seemed to get no better. I didn’t get a lot of help from my parents. Sport camps were out of the question. I didn’t know there were such things, and even if I did, I would have had to overcome my parents’ long-standing self-improvement philosophy, which said, “If you’re not good at something, you weren’t meant to do it.” They believed that real basketball players just hopped out of the womb hitting jump shots. So the chances of my getting them to spend money for someone to teach me how to play a sport were pretty slim. When it came to athletics, I was on my own.
I don’t know many farm kids who have gone on to become great athletes. Those who do most often do it in the brawn-over-brain sports of football, wrestling, pig throwing, or cow pie tossing. Those big-hearted, thick-headed plow jockeys make great linemen, but when it comes to finesse sports like basketball, golf, tennis, or soccer, forget it. That’s not to say a farm kid couldn’t become a great golfer, but who has time to practice? Most farmers believed as my father did—that chores and schoolwork came first. Athletics were for city kids who had nothing to do. However, practice time notwithstanding, I just didn’t come into this world with natural athletic grace and nerves of steel. And to top it all off, I suffered from a chronically busy mind.

My city friends didn’t seem to have this problem. They didn’t worry about good versus evil or why God made them or how to serve the Lord in this world. They didn’t spend time wondering whether they’d just committed a venial sin or not. They just lived and shot buckets, read Mad magazine, farted, and enjoyed life. Continue reading →