Proof Of My Existence Carl Winderl   © Copyright 2024 by Carl Winderl

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

What more does any14-year-old desire as much or more so than anything else in his barely prepubescent day-mare world -- but proof of his existence.

Well, that’s how it was for me.

Actually, I was a mere 15-year-old at the time, just turned so on October 16^th, the day after basketball tryouts began for the junior varsity team at Pompano Beach Senior High School in Pompano Beach, Florida, back in 1964.

I was certainly not much to look at on that tryout day. The year before I’d been even a lot less to look at, a super-scrub on the 9^th-grade football team at Deerfield Beach Junior High School, in Deerfield Beach, Florida. I topped the charts then at 5’6” and weighed in at 100 pounds. Just the right size and shape to be cannon fodder on the field of night-mares against the 1^st-team defense and offense on that blazing hot football field behind the stand-alone, bee-hive looking, one-room portable classrooms, connected by newly-poured make-shift concrete sidewalks.

The bird’s-eve view of our hastily, thrown-together jr-high campus must’ve appeared as cloudy pearl beads strung loosely on a thread.

All set up helter-skelter to accommodate the burgeoning, bursting-at-the-county-lines population in Broward County in the mid-60’s.

And a year later, at the jayvee tryouts at Pompano Beach Senior High I certainly struck no fear into the hearts and minds of the other 30-plus hopefuls, shown up on that October afternoon to be one of the dozen “chosen” to make the team, and be known that school year as Baby Tonrnadoes, honored to wear the pristine white, home uniforms, or the foreboding midnight blue away uniforms, tastefully trimmed in gold. In those uniforms the chosen 12 would race up and down the home and away courts. With gusto and pride they’d compete to be chosen again at the end of the season for the honor to wear the varsity uniform for their junior year.

On that day though, at not quite 5’8” and just under 110 pounds, to the other 30 or so hopefuls I’m sure I posed little or no threat to their chances of being one of the “dozen.”

On that first tryout day, all 30 or so of us were lined up on the baseline under the basket. Even before we’d even touched a ball or had warmed up, Coach Jim Phipps, the jayvee coach, instructed us to give our name and what junior high team we played on as 9^th-graders.

As a “W” I usually found myself at the end of a line or far back in the corner of a classroom, alphabetized in place, but on that day I stood pretty much in the middle of the line.

But I did not stand out.

And so the 1^st hopeful on my far right started, stated his name, and what junior high team he’d played for last year. As the introductions continued down the line nearer to me, I heard 1-by-1 a hopeful’s name and the name of one of the 5 feeder jr highs to our senior high.

But when it came time for me to introduce myself, I stated just my name, “Carl Winderl, Coach. But -- I, uh, didn’t play ball for any junior high team last year.”

Coach Phipps, not uncordially walked over closer to me. “Did you go to school out of state, perhaps, -- Carl?”

“No, sir,” I meekly replied, carefully studying the highly polished hardwood floor of the rather cavernous empty gym.

“Oh,” he replied, pausing, I hoped, to pass by me over to talk to the player on my left. But no, he followed up with, “Were you injured, in some way, Carl -- and weren’t able to try out -- or, was there another reason?”

I let my eyes meet his, to stammer, “Uh, no sir, uh -- Coach, I -- uh, I tried out, but I didn’t make the team.”

A couple of guffaws reached my ears, some titters and snickers seemed to ripple up and down the line.

And I averted my gaze from Coach Phipps’ eyes to return to my study of the fascinating wood-grain patterns in the hardwood flooring.

Fortunately, Coach Phipps, picked right up with the introductions, moving down the line.

Eventually, practice commenced, and I soldiered on, while I’m sure the 30 or so others possibly wondered why I was even there. Or probably had already dismissed me, assuming I’d be no threat to their chances of breaking through the 12-player barrier.

Technically, about 7 or so of the 30 hopefuls had played hoop at Deerfield Junior High, and so my non-participation in any program last year was really old, old news for them. And I’m sure I was so much less of a threat to their chances of making the team. Than to any of the other hopefuls.

Even so, I was determined to stick it out.

Truth be told, the previous year at Deerfield Junior High I was one of the last 3 guys to be cut from the team. I’d made it to the next-to-last cut-down number, of 15, but turns out I was just good enough to be able to survive the next-to-last cut, and yet bad enough to not make the final cut-down to 12.

So I was deprived of wearing the coveted blood-red and midnight-black uniforms of the Deerfield Beach Junior High basketball team. The team’s mascot and nickname was: the Bucks. Cleverly denotative of Deer-field Beach.

As a 1^st-rate, last-minute reject, I could only bring myself to watch the 1^st game of the season, a home game, on the school’s best asphalt outdoor court, with chain link nets. We had no in indoor facilities. This was Florida, the Sunshine State. And four years ago we were a glorified pastureland with a smattering of palmetto palm trees.

Actually, I only stayed for the 1^st half of that first game. I’d seen enough to be convinced and have confirmed that I was not good enough just bad enough not to have been the worst player on the team, as the 12^th.

I knew why though, mostly “why,” I’d been cut.

Since I was new to the school, 9^th-grade was my first year there, and so nobody knew me from ‘boo.’

Plus, I was an absolute scrub on the football time. I didn’t even dress for the 1^st two games of the season, but had to sit in the stands wearing black pants, a white shirt, and tie, along with the other dozen or so scrubs not good enough to be given a game uniform to wear to hopelessly sit on the bench and watch the game a little closer to the action, but from ground level.

That was a big deal. I knew that contributed to my being mercilessly cut from the basketball team, because in the eyes of the basketball coach he’d already pegged me as a scrub.

The proof? The football coach was Robert Bidwell. And the basketball coach was the same Robert Bidwell. It must’ve been an easy decision for him.

Well, fast forward almost a half-decade to the spring of 1967, my senior year at PBSHS, a big bright light shone at the end of the proverbial graduation tunnel, beckoning me to enter.

Shortly after I’d played my last game on the varsity b-ball team at PBSHS, I had the pick of a half-dozen full-ride basketball scholarships. Within the month after, before March was over I’d receive letters, phone calls, visits from several assistant coaches and admission counselors, oh, and with one head coach who surprisingly met with my mom and me in our little all-purpose dining area, living area, and TV corner off to the side of our catch-all “Florida” room. Formerly just a screened-in porch.

As kids, my younger sisters and I didn’t know any better. We were that poor.

Yes, the recruiting process was so vastly and totally different in those days

It gets better though.

This very much better.

I walked away a debt-free college graduate, thanks to my full-ride scholarship; I went directly to graduate school at the University of Chicago, earning an M.A. in American Literature, and from New York University I earned a Ph.D. in Creative Writing. I still walked away pretty much debt-free from all that schooling thanks to tuition-free grants, and my NYU general expenses were covered by federal grants-in-add.

I’d done all right, incurring no short- nor long-term debt for all that education. More on that later. Maybe.

So, against odds longer than a Kentucky Derby 40-to-1 long-shot on a maiden 3-year-old, I made the team. The Baby Tornado JV Team.

To be sure, I was the 12^th-man, on a 12-man team, and would hold down that last spot ridin’ the pine all season long.

But I’d made the team.

Got to wear for the first time ever real home & away uniforms, white for home, deep dark midnight navy blue for away, with -- 23 -- my number, either white or blue, opposite my jersey color, and trimmed in gold. Plus, had my very own number-matching warm-up. And best yet, I was given 2 pairs of high-top white Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star shoes. One solely for practice and the other for games only.

My first unform number -- 23 -- was the same one I’d have issued to me then and would wear throughout both high school and college. Better yet, before Michael Jordan wore that number, I did first.

At the end of the season, my game shoes looked like they’d barely been worn, and used. But they were worn, some, mostly for pre-game warm-ups and half-time shoot arounds. So, at the season’s end I took ‘em home, put ‘em back in the red cardboard box they came in, and proudly propped the box open, resting inside on the tissue paper that’d been wrapped around them when they were first given to me.

To me, they weren’t just tennis shoes; they were trophies I wore on my feet.

Truly, they were the only real trophies I’d ever have till the end of my senior year, and then onto my four years in college.

Again, getting ahead of myself.

So that sophomore year, our team played 28 games, but I played in maybe half of them, tops. And when I did play, it was for pity minutes, whether we were winning big, or losing big. After all, I was the 12^th-man on a 12-player jv squad. Mostly a feeder squad for the varsity. Probably only the best 4 or 5 on that squad might move up to the varsity for their junior year. The rest of us on the squad were little more than practice fodder for those future elites who’d be fortunate to “move up.”

Like that was gonna happen, for me.

And for sure, I was practice fodder, again, like I’d been when a scrub on the 9^th-grade football team.

When we scrimmaged in practice, the bottom 5 of the 12 were always on the court so that the other favored 7 players could hone their offensive prowess or their defensive skills against the real- or ill-perceived hapless us, the weak sisters on the team, as our jv head coach, Coach Phipps, usually referred to us.

And I was okay with that.

Because at least I was on a team, the jv team of one of the state of Florida’s historically and perennially ranked top 20 teams, in the prestigious 3A Division. And I got to be close-up and personal with the ultra-uber-cool varsity players, whom I longed to emulate and dreamed of being one -- some day. Some day. If I ever grew to between 6’4” and 6’5” or more, like most of them.

I eventually topped out at only 6’3 ½” -- good enough, as it turned out to earn that full-ride hoop scholarship, largely I think because I was a guard that size in ’67 who could dunk, and could do so with relative ease.

But why did I so crave playing on the varsity, some day?

After home games that sophomore year, I’d linger in the foyer of the field house, across from the floor-to-ceiling trophy case, repository of the all-conference trophies, state championship trophies, our prestigious annual State-Wide Christmas Tournament awards and trophies.

Yeah -- Lots of polished wood bases topped with gleaming faux gold-plated glittering figurines and victors’ cups.

Which, my senior year in that prestigious 3-game, 8-team, single elimination tourney, I’d be the MVP when we captured that title in the last week of December, 1966.

Oh again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

But my sophomore year I’d have to pay my dues. Willingly, not reluctantly, nor even grudgingly.

For example, on our last away game of the regular season, riding in the bus to our game that Saturday night against our cross-county, arch-rival Fort Lauderdale High School, I somehow had managed to wrangle a seat near the front of the bus, 3 rows behind the bus driver, and next to Bill Brooks, the better of our starting guards on the jv squad. In front of us, in the 2^nd row from the front, alone, and sideways in that seat, sat Bobby McKinnon the better of the starting guards on the varsity.

Bobby was a truly special athlete. A very special athlete in those days. He’d be one of the last true 3-sport athletes in the late 60’s and 70’s.

He was the quarterback on the football team, and one of the co-captains. The better starting guard on the varsity basketball team, and co-captain again. And he was the star shortstop on our perennial top-10 ranked state-wide baseball team, and co-captain, too, of course. Oh, and he was a member of the National Honor Society.

He’d accept a full-ride scholarship to Georgia-Tech, where he’d play baseball, and major in electrical engineering.

Apart from all that heavy-handed achievement hoopla staring me in the face whenever I walked into the gym and our locker room, what especially kept me going that long but not interminable sophomore season as a certifiable scrub on the jv team, was the box score of our game in The Sun Sentinel and The Fort Lauderdale News, the morning and afternoon newspapers serving the surging population in all of Broward County.

Displayed right after the varsity and jv ball games the night before appeared the box scores of both the varsity and the junior varsity teams.

That’s what I lived for. Such as it was in those days. There, in black & white: proof of my existence.

When the doldrums of my newly turned 15-year-old life shone not quite so gray as on the other 4 days in the week, I got to don the snow white or deep dark midnight navy blue unforms, numbered 23, trimmed in gleaming gold. With a numbered warm-up to match.

But, back to what I remember most from that bus ride was a tidbit from Bobby’s conversation with Bill. He told him, while I eavesdropped, “I only need to score 1 point tonight, -- and I’ll crack the 200-point club again this year.”

Bobby’s soliloquy sort of stopped there, so I leaned over to whisper to Bill, “Wow, Bill -- man, all I need to score tonight is 199 points -- and I’ll crack the jv 200-point club,” which sent Bill into gales and peals of laughter.

That got Bobby’s attention “big time”! And he said to Bill, “What’s so funny, Brooks?”

Bill looked over at me with a sly smile, before he told Bobby my quip. That caused Bobby to give me a sort of woeful, baleful look. In response, I shrugged and kind of effaced a weak, sad smile.

To put that into a more proper perspective, at the end of my senior year, I’d scored 473 points. (32 games, 14.8 p.p.g. avg.)

And as a gentle, thoughtful reminder, I was MVP of our Christmas Tourney my senior year, while in his senior year Bobby wasn’t even all-tournament, 1^st or 2^nd team.

Yeah, I’d improved more than a little, after my pitiful, and pity-full, sophomore year.

Even so, I laboured through that long and awful sophomore jv season.

I really didn’t mind all that much though.

To be sure, the jv cheerleaders never really got to yell my name in any of their name-bearing cheers. Like, “Winderl, Winderl, Winderl -- he’s our man! If he can’t do it No-oooo-body can!” Or when I was at the free-throw line: “We want another one! Just like the other one! Come on, Winderl, -- raise the score! Make one more!!!”

By my senior year, those husky, deep-throated varsity cheerleaders had plenty of cause to chant my name often and powerfully. I don’t recall though that I ever much heard it or listened to it. Or for it. Coach Morris had so drummed and drilled it out of our heads NOT to Ever think about hearing ourselves beckoned into the night by our names. So their siren calls fell not on our waxless ears. Too bad Odysseus’d never met Tucker Morris.

Sort of like he told us never to be caught reading our press clippings.

I didn’t need to.

As I found out though toward the end of my senior season Patrice Williams and Carol Campbell both kept scrapbooks chock full of any article in either the Fort Lauderdale News or in the Sun Sentinel that even mentioned me by name. Also any article, too, in our PBSHS school newspaper.

And especially any game-action photographs.

So too did my younger sisters, Lynne and Chris. Although I didn’t really pay much attention to their rudimentary scrapbooking, unless they had newspapers, scissors, an applicator of LePage glue, and an open scrapbook scattered across our kitchen table.

I guess a couple or so underclass girls scrapbooked me, too. But I never saw them to hold in my hands, only hearsay fell on my not so deaf, and dumb ears, so they’ll remain nameless here. No matter, after all these years.

But that sophomore jv season, from my vantage point though, at the end of the bench, I had a clear un-impeded view of the cheerleaders shaking their pom-poms, kicking up their black & white saddle shoes choreographed to the pep band’s spiffy, so up-tempo cheer songs, and flouncing around in their short-short pleated skirts -- jumping and dancing in place in the cadence of their deep-throated urgencies that the varsity players, gods-in-training, would “Sink It!” and make the South Florida Basketball World safer with another victory!

I’d have to wait two years for all that.

But I’d make the wait worth it. And I put in the time and effort to make that happen.

In that meantime though, my sophomore classmates either ignored me and paid me no nevermind about being on the jv team. Or they’d tease me after ballgames if I’d ever get some “real” playing time, be allowed to shoot the ball, or even make a basket if I tried.

I was not deterred though. In fact, Mrs. Caswell, our Latin 1 teacher, had introduced us to Decartes and his everso-famous dictum: Cogito, ergo sum. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ As Mrs. Caswell explained, he said that the act of thinking was proof enough that we existed, and especially that what we thought about alone was reason enough to cancel out any doubts about ourselves.

I so believed that then that if tattoos had been popular back “in the day” I’d’ve probably had that motto tattooed on my bicep or on the inside of my wrist, so that when I wore a long-sleeved shirt it’d be covered up. Especially when I went to church.

Not much consolation though for me during our home games, at the very end of the bench, thinking about whether or not to hope for a pity minute or less at the end of the 4^th quarter.

During the wait, til then, the stands were mostly empty when our home games started, at six, two hours before the main event, when the varsity players took command of our home court. However, about the time the 4^th quarter for our game began, the roll-out bleachers and the fixed stadium seats began to fill up. By the end of our game, whether we were winning or losing, the fieldhouse would start to fill up. Few empty seats were available for the last couple minutes.

Bad news for me though.

That’s when I’d get my playing time, if any was to be gotten by me.

If there was any time still on the clock when I checked in at the scorer’s table, got motioned onto the court by one of the officials, and maybe have time to look for my man to guard, or run over to an open spot so that maybe, just ‘maybe,’ the other guard’d look toward me for an in-bound pass, but invariably he’d just fake the pass to me, the certifiable 12^th-man on the team. Then pass it into somebody else, one of the other players who’d’ve had plenty more playing time than me.

Oh, however though, there was that one night.

I was in for far less than a minute, and got to run a play as the clock was winding down.

I’m sure the jv cheerleaders and the nearly capacity crowd had already started chanting, “10 – 9 – 8 – . . . ”

Which all of course fell noiselessly on my deaf ears.

Nonetheless, I was dutifully trying to run the ‘last shot’ play, which must have gotten me open, because the other guard passed the ball to me.

I caught it, turned to face the hoop, faked a pass to a team-mate, took a dribble to the right, picked it up after just that one dribble. Feinted to the left, then saw our center crossing through the lane.

I think I must have looked like I was going to shoot.

Actually, I wasn’t.

I hadn’t taken a shot yet all season.

But from the top of the key I started to loft a weak pass in the direction of the hoop, aiming for our center, I think.

In any event, the guy sort of guarding me jumped up at me and slapped at my arm, sending my intended pass on an altered trajectory, errantly so, looking more like a shot, I guess, off to the side where it clanged low off the backboard, but not too far from the hoop.

And one of the officials blew his whistle, looked at the slap-happy player, pointed at his number, told him to raise his hand, and shouted at the scorer’s table his number, “Thirty-two. Foul on 32.”

Then he beckoned to me, “23, -- at the line, shooting two.”

I’m reasonably certain I looked down at my number, as if to confirm it was me.

It was.

No referee had ever called out my number before.

I think my first thought was -- wow, our numbers are a palindrome. Yeah, even way back then I was a poet-in-training.

I’d just learned that figure of speech in my sophomore Advanced English class.

I still stood there thinking that, when the official walked over to me, ball in hand and said, “23. You’re at the line. Shooting two.”

I think I probably said something highly memorable, like, “Oh. Uh -- yeah. Thank you, sir.”

When I finally arrived at the “charity stripe,” I looked down at my feet, to make sure I wasn’t over the line, or even touching it, with the toes of one of my new-ish Chuck’s.

The ref readied to hand me the ball, and said to all the players lined up on either side of the key, and to me, “Two shots, boys. Rest on the first.”

And he handed me the ball. Nervously, squeamishly, I spun the ball around until “Wilson” was square up, facing me. Staring at me.

I bounced the ball just 3 times, like I’d done only a few hundred times. Bent my knees just slightly for the easy release, and shot it.

The ball barely glanced off the front of the rim.

I’m sure everybody in the gym thought, “Man -- what a weak sister shot!” And I’m pretty sure, also, Coach Phipps thought so, too.

Deep down inside I was thanking God that I didn’t just graze the net instead.

And Coach Morris, standing at the entry to the tunnel from the locker room, probably thought, “Goll-ee damn, Winner-all -- you could play the Star-Spangled Banner with drumsticks off your tight-ass butt!’

And he would’ve been right.

The second shot, which’d be live, and re-boundable if I missed, but I felt a little less jittery and exhaled a little more prior to the release, and the ball landed flat on the top front of the rim, but there was just enough backspin on it, to let it hang there a second, and then drop through the hoop.

And that’d be my one point that I’d get to tally up to Bill Brooks and Bobby Mckinnon on the bus ride to our last game of the season against Fort Lauderdale High.

More importantly, that’d be the “1” that I’d get to see the next morning on the sports page of the Sun Sentinel. At the very end of the article on our game the night before at the bottom of the page, there’d appear the box score for both varsity teams enumerating their game stats.

Then after theirs’d be the box scores for both jv teams tallying up their team and individual game stats.

Before the jv stats for our game though, a couple-three paragraphs would high-light our game’s overview, especially if we won, or there’d be low-lights if we lost.

Then there’d be in columns the real factual truths of who played and ‘how,’ because statistics do not lie.

The far left column of course listed the players’ last names, not in alphabetical order, but chronologically by 1^st the starting five, then descending numerically by how many minutes each player played, if he got in the game.

Of course, I’d be the very last on that list. Always last. Because I always played the fewest number of minutes -- never more than one -- mostly only parts of a minute, sometimes just for seconds. They never listed seconds, only full minutes. Or in my case only ever 1 minute, . . . usually symbolically so.

So, if my name was ever listed at all, it’d have a “1” after it under the “minutes played column.” Well, for me, that’d be the ‘one’ for a minute, no matter how little I was in the game.

As I learned from my maternal grandmother, “It didn’t make me no nevermind.”

At least I’d taken off my warm-up, checked in at the scorer’s table, knelt before it, and got to step on the court. Those few actions guaranteed I’d make the box score.

With both feet on the court, in-bounds, I’d pause to look at all the many, many faces in the crowded usually packed-out S.R.O. gym. And for them to look at me, if they so desired. I cared not if they saw me, looked at me. Pathetically, or otherwise, maybe, probably, because of my pity-full barely one minute of pity.

All that’d change though in 2 years.

I know now, and knew then, too, I should have been hugely discouraged. And I was. But not enough to give up.

And if nobody else -- coaches, players, fans, friends, teachers, even family -- could not see I was improving, even if just incrementally -- I could tell, and I knew: some day it would be exponential.

Again, in the meantime, I was content -- not happy -- maybe only a little satisfied -- to see my name occasionally in the stats of the box score.

For once, and only for one time, for me, at the top of the column the categories appeared, in a line, standing in for: player (his name); mins (for minutes played); SA (shots attempted); SM (shots made); FTM (free throws made); F (personal fouls committed); and TP (total points scored).

So, the final line beneath the categories for me for that one game looked like:

Player     Mins. SA SM FTM F TP

Winerl     1        0    0     1        0 1

For my sophomore year on the junior varsity, in the fifteen or so games I actually stepped onto the court for, although never for more than a minute, always less than one, it’s the only line-score with multiple 1’s to go with multiple 0’s.

Oh, I was so binary ahead of my time.

No surprise there, or there should not be, because ever since my tenth birthday I was so sometimes ahead of my time.

I know that 1^st literal linear list of a 1 and a 0 would set in motion my future lifestyle of those once in a while binary combinations securing coded information, confirming that I existed.

And all I had to do was think about it, to dispel whatever doubts, like time’s wingéd chariot, ‘twere ever always hovering near.

Even so or just nonetheless, that’s the result of the one game when I scored one point that enabled me to make my famous quip to Bill Brooks and Bobby McKinnon on our bus ride for our last away game of the regular season. Against our proverbial cross-county, arch rivals.

To give that rivalry a more or less contemporary perspective, as I mentioned earlier, during my senior year season I was the MVP of our perennial Christmas Tournament, when we won all three of our games. The final game was against, yes, Fort Lauderdale High School.

The score -- 51 to 49. I was the leading scorer in the game with 17 points -- exactly a third of the points scored by the rest of my 11 team-mates for good ole Pompano Beach High; and slightly more than a third scored by the whole Fort Lauderdale team.

It gets better yet, in my favor.

In that championship game, Lauderdale High had one last possession with 15 seconds left on the clock, to try to tie the game. Their hot-shot senior guard, José Escharté, a mere 5’9” to my then 6’1½”, brought the ball up-court to run their last-second play to tie, but when he crossed mid-court and the time-line, I who’d been guarding him man-to-man loosely to that point up-court jumped close to his right-hand dribble forcing him to use his off-hand, his left-hand. When he crossed over his dribble in response to my closer guarding I anticipated his move and slapped the ball at mid-dribble; it rolled quickly away from us.

I dove for the loose ball rolling away, sliding to secure it, but so did José. We ended up in a 2-man scrum in front of the scorer’s table, each of us holding tightly to the ball.

The ref blew his whistle, the clock stopped with 7 seconds remaining in the game. We walked to the center jump-ball circle, and lined up to await the referee’s toss.

I grinned at José, not too much, but enough for him to know I knew I was going to out-jump him and slap the ball high and away to the other end of the court, not immediately out of bounds, but far enough and slow enough to eat up most of those 7 seconds left in the game.

And I did.

Rabbit-like he tracked it down before it rolled off the court. All he could do was grab it, turn, and throw it wildly and harmlessly over my longer out-stretched arms, sort of in the direction of our basket, about 74 feet away.

The buzzer buzzed.

Game over. We won. And I walked off the court and home with the MVP Trophy.

Unbeknowst to me at the time, the Director of Alumni Relations for the college I’d eventually attend on the full-ride basketball scholarship in the fall was sitting high up in the stands of our stadium-style standing-room-only fieldhouse that night. An alum of that college had seen him at an alumni gathering earlier in the week, and had said, “Hey, Dr. Ide -- there’s this Nazarene kid playing some pretty good basketball for Pompano High. He’s playing in a tournament this week. You should go check him out.”

And he did.

The rest is history, of course, and some back story for this slice of life story about my past life.

That’s how the coach from Illinois knew to contact me, and that’s the story he told me toward the beginning of my freshman season as a college hoopster.

As I intimated earlier, I did get better after being cut by Coach Bidwell in 9^th grade at Deerfield Beach Junior High. That should have ended my basketball career then and there. And for some guys it might have.

I did have a measure of success, maybe even a smidgen of pleasant low-key revenge in response to being cut by Coach Bidwell.

Actually I really never harbored, fostered, nor allowed to fester any bad or hard feelings against him. If I’d’ve been him, I probably would have cut me, too. I looked at it then, and still look at it now as a blessing in disguise. Instead, his actions propelled me to work even harder, as I’ve tried to reference here earlier, so that some day I might be able to croon a tune, à la Toby Keith: “So, how do you like me now.”

Really though, there was a situation during my senior season when I could have, if I’d had a time machine.

Coach Bidwell, like a lot of junior high and high school coaches in those days moonlighted in their off-seasons refereeing, officiating, and umpiring high school football, basketball, track & field, and baseball games and other high school athletic events.

In fact, early in my senior season, Coach Bidwell first refereed one of our home games.

Early in the first quarter our opponents, Plantation High School took off on a 3-on-1 fast break. They were the 3, I was the 1 back-pedaling to get in position to protect our goal from an easy lay-up.

As Coach Morris’d instructed us, and I in particular took seriously how he wanted us to play defense against a full-court fast break. I back-pedaled quickly to stop and jog in place in the middle of the lane, bouncing on the balls of my feet, ready to dart left or right to defend the 1^st pass to one of the forwards filling the 2 lanes to the hoop.

Then I jab stepped a fake to the ball-handler when he neared the top of the free-throw circle causing him to stop and consider his options while I faked a jab step to my left, to his right, which made him decide to look to make a bounce pass to my right with his weak off-hand left, and then I took a real step in that direction. He hesitated, then passed it, but my quick move made him pass it too slow and too late to the forward who couldn’t slow down enough to catch the pass behind him.

And so the ball rolled out of bounds, down to the end of the court, and bounced harmlessly out of bounds off the base of the stage. Then it ricocheted to roll back under the roll-out bleachers, about a dozen or so feet under them.

I trotted to see the ball roll to a stop, in all the clutter, trash, and dust-bunnies under the roll-out bleachers.

I stood there looking at the ball. Coach Bidwell trotted over to stand next to me. He looked at the ball there, then looked up at me. I realized then I was 2 or 3 inches taller than him. I’d grown ‘some’ since I played freshman football for him as a scrub at 5’6”.

He looked at the ball again, then at me, then at the ball still again.

I hadn’t moved.

He put the whistle back in his mouth, bent over, crouched over, and fetched the ball out of the detritus himself. He climbed out with the ball under his arm, and the two of us walked on over toward the place where the ball had bounced out of bounds.

He took his whistle out of his mouth, shifted the ball into his other hand, as we walked over to where I’d in-bound the ball.

He looked up at me and said, “Gee -- thanks, Carl, for getting the ball for me.”

But he smiled just a little as he said it.

My first thought, was to say, “Gee, Coach Bidwell -- thanks for not cutting me from the basketball team in 9^th grade.”

But I didn’t. I just kind of shrugged, and sort of smiled back. I think. I hope I did.

I knew better than to be a smart-ass to any game official. Plus, I didn’t really want him to think I had any hard feelings about the past.

Plus, I was really pleased and pleasantly surprised that he called me by my first name.

The best part though is that he officiated quite a few games for us -- home and away -- and of all the officials who called our games that year. I don’t remember him ever making a call against me that I could, would, or should complain about.

He was a good guy. A cool guy. I always hoped, still do, he’d somehow know I went on to play hoop in college.

Oh, Coach Bidwell, he ever so lived up to his name, now that I think about it. So, yeah, “Bidwell.” I guess in a back-handed complimentary sort of way, he did “bid me well,” into the future.

There was a down-side to it all. He did cut me, but some-thing some-how in that “cutting” I was released, to see if I could still figure out a way to make some-thing of myself, on the court.

The up-side then?

To prove him wrong, and that I could in some-way right that wrong then, for the first time in my naiveté I’d stand up to a male authority figure, to any stand-in for my alcoholic father in absentia.

Like some other 14-year-old, on a raft floating down the Mississippi River . . .

That’s probably a bunny trail I’d best not go too far along into. I’m sure there’s a pretty deep rabbit hole at the end of it.

One Alice probably wouldn’t even ever dare enter, although Grace Slick’d probably just dive head-first right into it.

What I realize now that what I really was after all along in those line scores was proof positive I did exist. Not to be doubted, not to even feel the least bit doubtful. No matter how paltry and feeble those 1’s and 0’s portrayed me.

Thus there’s this very digitized format -- right before your eyes: made possible by the tap-tap-tapping of my fingertips, preserving in 1’s and 0’s, the “Proof of My Existence.” That;s the ultimate common denominator. Just the sequence of the right 1’s and 0’s

So what I more so realize now is that the 1’s and 0’s of my binary portrayal on these lines still tell the tale of the tape -- the record of my life, as it is.

Proving my existence.

Which I don’t doubt. At all.

For I can and I do update it and upgrade it.

Descarte’s dictum, that is.

I still and I will ever provide evidence for the proof of my existence.

So, that it’s now -- Cogito, ergo futura esse.

‘I think, therefore I will be.’

Carl's story list and biography

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