Less Than 10% Remaining
What octogenarian ballers taught me about never quitting
So I’m casing the frozen section of the Winn-Dixie in Fort Lauderdale, frustrated that I couldn’t find the blueberries…
I was down in Florida to watch my father, Frank — who is eighty-three — play basketball in the National Senior Games. We’ll get back to that. First, here’s the deal with the berries: During the 90s, I spent a few years in France where I acquired a fairly decadent diet. So after learning that blueberries are the #1 “Superfood,” loaded with stuff like vitamins, antioxidants and…like…rear defrost, I decided to begin my day with a smoothy, front-loaded with frozen berries and other Superfoods like walnuts, leafy greens and yogurt. That way, if the rest of the day devolves into an orgy of pork fat, apple-cider doughnuts and gin (or if I have to Mark Myself Safe after washing down an entire wheel of Epoisses cheese with Cabernet Franc) I will have at least performed the dietary equivalent of a carbon-offset credit by a big polluter. After two passes of the frozen section, however, I began to question why — in the face of our unwillingness to combat Stage Four Capitalism in Preapocalyptic America — I’m still even doing this at all. For if we just keep accelerating toward mass extinction, I could have just eaten Ding-Dongs and Doritos Locos Tacos all along the way instead.
But then I noticed the gap.
Right in the middle of the well-stocked display, stood a gap as perfect as the one between Lauren Hutton’s teeth. On closer inspection, THIS was the frozen berry section. The whole thing — every single item — gone. Picked clean by the slow-moving horde of senior athletes who had descended on the Fort Lauderdale Hilton Marina. Yet another example of older generations leaving nothing for the rest of us who will have to figure this all out.
The National Senior Games, which includes more than twenty sports, unfolds every two years, and this is my dad’s third time competing. Unfortunately, his former teammates couldn’t make it. For the kinds of things that disrupt younger rosters can really take a piece out of older ones. Things like injuries, medical procedures (heart bypass is common and a good number of the knees are after-market) and yes, Death. Luckily, my father found work for himself with The Florida Fossils, and I sat down courtside with my mom, Jacqueline, to watch the action.
In the Over-80 division, height and speed matter that much more. For in this marveled universe, a super-gravitational force keeps the feet closer to the ground, so a big man with the ball in the paint can more easily fire off a clean shot, while a speedy point guard (a handful are still Roadrunner quick) can create opportunities for themselves, and some are just deadly from the outside.
My dad has put points on the board, but is not among the top shooters. Still, he compensates by being a monster on D. Players get five fouls — a good amount for two fifteen-minute halves — and in this game, he is burning through them like a stack of senior-discount coupons for the early bird. While I love watching him play, there are times when it feels as nerve-wracking and nuts as being strapped into a rusted rollercoaster. During the second half, I’m watching him fight for a rebound and this swells my chest with pride — until he goes down. My seat then morphs into a razor blade and a bolt of fear rockets through me and it’s impossible not to think of the player on the opposing team who was right then in surgery for a hip fractured on the court the previous day. Down on his back, my father grips his elbow in pain and I glance over at my mom, feeling an impulse to run out there, but then he’s back on his feet, back up in the face of the guy with the ball, and my pounding heart feels like it’s trying to blast off through my constricted throat, and when he forces a turnover, and then scores, I am fighting back spasms of tears. The whole thing feels like a Bro fantasy camp where participants practice repressing male emotion, and I’m not sure why I’m doing that. Maybe I feel like I’m supposed to be there for him, be there for my mom (who rolled with that WAY better than me) and don’t want to seem like I’m falling apart, but I’m barely holding it together and I wonder if this psychotic see-sawing between elated wonder and utter helplessness is what it feels like to be a parent — specifically the parent of a child who could spontaneously suffer cardiac arrest.
A time-out is called and I clock the action of the Over-75 women doing battle on the next court. One team looks like a compilation of every single gym teacher I’ve ever had — at their current ages now — and then I notice their totally awesome name: The Silver Slammers. Then a REALLY old guy clutching a duffel bag walks past and he’s wearing a T-shirt that shows the red outline of a smartphone battery with the caption LESS THAN 10% REMAINING. That also cracks me up and I’m glad for the distraction.
The Fossils, down in the last minute, intentionally foul. Unfortunately, they’ve fouled the other team’s best shooter. This guy is better from the line than half of the active players in the NBA, and that’s probably because he’s been shooting free-throws since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was in diapers. And after taking in all of that geriatric staccato, the mechanical fluidity with which he launches a nothing-but-net, and then perfectly replicates, is its own thing of beauty.
While it’s clear that time will run out on The Fossils, my father, looking as intense and in flux as cat who just spotted a bird, is still gunning for possession. I loved that he was still going for it, but it also hurt. It hurt because watching him was a visceral reminder of how — even in Preapocalyptic America, even if we’ve got Less Than 10% Remaining — losing can be transcended if you refuse to quit.
And not quitting might involve more than the continued ingestion of frozen berries.
