64 x 12, 13,14 (Coaching)

It's been a long time. Somehow I'm coaching

basketball again. First game of the season, for

some reason I've missed all the practices, haven't
met any of the kids. I call them

over and ask them to tell me what

they already know, what questions they have before

the game begins. They want to know about

foul shots, why they can't make them. "Well,"

I say, "you probably can't reach the basket

from the foul line yet. You could jump,

but then you'd go over the foul line.

But there's a way. Any of you ever heard

of Rick Barry?" (Blank looks, shaking heads.)

He led the NBA in free throw percentage

Using an underhand shot from between his legs.

If you use it, your friends and opponents

are going to laugh at you. But once

they see those shots going in, I guarantee

they're going to stop laughing fast. Let's see

how it goes today. Tomorrow at practice we'll

start working on foul shots." The kids look

at each other, look at me. They're not

quite sure about what they've gotten into. Neither

am I, until crows outside wake me up.

Process Reflection:

Kind of fell into this one. The basic plot line of the dream is true to life; I did wake up this morning from a dream pretty much like this. There were a lot of interesting oddments in the dream that I had to edit out because of the self-imposed constraints of form (for example, that one of the players was a younger sibling of a student I actually had about 30 years ago and had not thought of in years) but what is here was all in the dream, including Rick Barry. Originally thought I might gesture at the dream in just 64 words, eight lines and eight words per line, but it kind of ran away with me, so I just stayed inside the form and kept it going. 

I remember one season when I used to coach back in the day, I told the players that if they couldn't hit 50% of their free throws in practice shooting the regular way, they would have to the diaper shot in games. They didn't like it, but they did it, and our team free throw shooting percentage did in fact go up that season. Why this is all showing up in my brain at age 67 at 5:30 in the morning, I have no idea.