I was a lot more creative when I was 8, just judging by what
you’re going to be reading about in the next 600 or so
words.
When I was 8, I was actually able to think of things to do with
my time, an ability which has been sorely lacking in recent years
(and the lack of it is probably a large part of the reason I joined
the Daily Bruin.)
It might just be that I had a longer attention span then (and an
8-year-old having a longer attention span than me is depressing,
even if it was a smaller version of me), or it might be that I
exhausted every creative bone and pore in my body, leaving nothing
but a husk of ennui.
Whatever the case, I was once able to think of things, and I did
just waste 143 of my words telling you that. Because this is a
sports column, and I am nominally a sports writer, I should
probably mention the sports I invented as a child. Some (I) have
called me the Ben Franklin of sports.
It was on the way to the bathroom that I dredged up the memory
of my first invented sport, long-distance peeing. I’m going
to go ahead and say I was 6 (maybe 16, I don’t know) when I
came up with the idea of seeing how far back I could stand while
still getting it all (mostly) in the toilet. Like most sports, I
was never really good at that one.
When I was in the fifth grade, I was no longer 8, but
we’re just going to pretend I was for the sake of my first
sentence. As I was saying, when I was in the fifth grade, I wanted
to play basketball. But there was only one court available, and
that court did not possess that firm necessity of all basketball
courts: a hoop. I don’t mean there wasn’t a net on the
basket. There was no basket.
Undaunted, I procured a basketball and, with my sidekick Lemuel
(not imaginary, but who admittedly had an imaginary friend’s
name) in tow, played about 15 minutes of hoopless basketball. This
was accomplished thus: I would throw the ball at the backboard. If
I hit the center of it, I scored a point. If I hit the side of it,
I got half a point. If I hit Lem on the ricochet, I won with no
contest. Lem did not get to throw.
I may have been kind of a jerk.
Even later, I invented baseball. Baseball is just about the
perfect sport, and it was with a spark of inspiration that Abner
Doubleday and I came up with the idea of a bat and ball game that
would take the country by storm. With dimensions of sheer
perfection in the “infield,” and an untamed and
unrestricted “outfield,” baseball has taken over the
hearts and minds of Americans since that day.
Maybe I didn’t invent all of this when I was 8. Maybe I
never invented any of these things. And maybe Lem actually is
imaginary. All the same, the ability to figure out original and
entertaining sports activities to do in your spare time is a talent
lost with youth, and we are all the sorrier (and fatter) for
it.
E-mail David at dwoods@media.ucla.edu if you think James
Naismith and basketball would have been funnier.