I accomplished the following two things when I played basketball on my school’s Parks and Rec team during the three seasons of fourth through sixth grade:

1. I got a rebound once and successfully dribbled the ball all the way to halfcourt before giving it to our point guard and hiding in the corner.
2. Scored a career total of six points, including a four point outburst in one game. It could have been eight points in that game, but I missed two layups.

I was the kid that the coach looked at during the closing minutes of a blowout win and said, “The only thing we haven’t done is get Dan some points.” He actually said that. And then he drew up a play for me. And I got the ball at the top of the key wide open. And I shot it over the backboard.

I was the reason these leagues have rules that say you have to play every kid at least one quarter. The only saving grace to my basketball career is that I wasn’t the kid that wore jeans.

My next door neighbor and I spent hours a day outside in my parents’ driveway playing basketball. It was all we did. That and Tecmo Bowl. We played the old Tecmo Bowl where you had four plays to choose from, not the newfangled Tecmo Super Bowl with it’s fancy graphics and mind-boggling eight plays. Fuck that version.

But when we weren’t playing Tecmo Bowl, we were shooting hoops. And you know how many cuts we made combined once we started trying out for school teams in junior high and high school? Zero.

I met up with him at a local park to play basketball a few months ago. I’m 30 now. He’s 29. We got into a game with this group of guys and they were much better at basketball than either of us.

When the game was over we all went our separate ways and we overheard them asking each other if they’d gotten their prom tickets yet.

I’m considering retiring from the game of basketball.