misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

In no particular order:

1. A basketball
2. A hoop
3. An ACL

My four-game stint in the New York Urban Professionals Basketball League, which ended abruptly Monday night as I lay writhing in pain on a dusty gym floor, had initially brought forth fond memories .... Memories of the time I could actually make lay-ups, dribble for more than three seconds, jump higher than a cockroach standing on a flea, and land without my femur and tibia sliding against each other like the Pacific and North American tectonic plates.

A reminder for my more forgetful readers (meaning those of you who have forgotten to read my blog the past five years): My right knee lost it's ACL to youth on a concrete basketball court in Hell's Kitchen almost exactly three years ago. I was nearly thirty at the time, lived on the top floor of a five-story walk up, had recently put my dreams of playing in the WNBA to rest, and thus decided to forgo the recommended operation. I knew any activities involving pivots (soccer, basketball, tennis, anaerobic masturbation drills) would have to be forever removed from my non-existent calendar, which I promptly did. Instead, I picked up running, lifting very, very light weights, and beer drinking. Three years of this, with a minimum of knee pain (except for the burn of an ice-cold beer resting atop it), had convinced me that I could once again pick up basketball. If Obama could still play at 46, then shit, I could play at 33. So I agreed to join a co-workers team, bought the cheapest knee brace I could find, and headed to the gym.

Reconnecting with the hobbies of your youth is a frustrating experience, as it is an in-your-face reminder of how far you've fallen. I could once dunk. Now, I can barely touch the rim. I could once shoot well. Now, I average four missed lay-ups a game. I could once play defense. Now I stand and hope the ball falls into my hands. And even worse: I'll never reclaim what I once had. It is physically impossible. I will never again be good at basketball. It is why old people pick up new hobbies such as cooking, reading, and golf: These are things specifically tailored to the natural talents of old people (patience, immobility, money). Youth offers no advantage in the art of cooking. In basketball, it does.

So Monday night, I was playing basketball without an ACL. Today, I was sitting inside an orthopaedic doctor's office, with a needle in my right knee, removing blood. It looked exactly like this:

Tomorrow, the MRI. Then, probably, the surgery I was always supposed to have. The doctor seemed a bit amused by my explanations of why I thought I could tear an ACL, undergo no rehab, wear a cheap knee brace, and continue to play basketball without a problem. He apparently didn't understand my core philosophy: If you don't think something, it's not a problem. Which ultimately proved to be somewhat correct, if misapplied. I didn't think I was getting any older. It took about two seconds for my body to remind me that, in fact, I was.