What hobbies have been passed down from your family?

If this essay is boring, you can blame it on my parents. They were inconsiderate. Some people do skydiving or axe-throwing, but all I got was basketball. My dad has played basketball his entire life. He played for a season in college and for my whole life he has played at the YMCA or at the park. While we don’t play together much anymore, we have probably played a thousand games together over my lifetime.

There is a picture of me in our family photo album. I am in the playroom of our old house and I am shooting a little rubber basketball into a three-foot plastic hoop. According to my parents, I was about one in the photo, and I had just started playing basketball.

There is another photo, this one from my grandparents house in New York. I am 3 years old holding a basketball and wearing a green jersey and matching shorts. By this point, I was completely obsessed. I read basketball books, I watched basketball on TV, and I wore exclusively basketball clothes. Whenever we went on vacation, finding a basketball hoop was my number one priority. If our destination didn’t have a hoop, I would improvise. I have a vague memory of going to the crayola factory and getting scolded for grabbing handfuls of crayons, walking away, and trying to toss them back into the bins from afar.

I remember hitting my first shot on a 10ft hoop, I can recall highlights and lowlights of games going back 10 years, I remember going to my first NBA game, I remember having basketball birthday parties at the YMCA, I remember father-son basketball camp, and I have so many memories of playing at the park with friends.

I started out playing YMCA and park district basketball. These teams were full of my friends and often coached by my dad. Around fourth grade, I played on my first AAU team, which practiced at the U of I facility and was occasionally visited by the U of I coach. I missed the beginning of my fourth grade season with a broken finger (I broke it at practice the day before our first game). In sixth grade, after breaking another finger the summer prior, I joined another AAU team (while still playing on the first one, simultaneously). For both teams we played in tournaments in Bloomington, Chicago, and St. Louis. I have great memories of staying in hotels and going to Buffalo Wild Wings after games.

Since seventh grade, I have played for my school team every year. My subbie season started off well, but I missed most of the season with a concussion and a broken finger. Freshman year was uneventful and Sophomore year was just practices and scrimmage. I can’t wait for this season – I think we have the potential to be really good.

I have so many more basketball memories: Putting bags over my ball to improve my ball-handling, writing plays for 3 on 3 tournaments, and spending hours reading about basketball shoes. I still watch NBA youtube videos and play 2K. I have three nerf hoops in my room and most days after school I shoot around at the park.

Certainly part of the reason I love basketball is my dad, but I don’t feel like I was forced into it. I’ve played football, soccer, and baseball as well, but basketball is what stuck. I also play tennis, but my life is pretty boring so I’ll stretch that into another essay.

One would think that after playing for so long I would be good at basketball. One would think. Despite likely not playing in college, I don’t regret any of the time I have spent playing basketball. It has provided friends, exercise, and competition. But most importantly, I love to play. I would revise this essay more, but I have to get some shots up before my CS quiz.

Have you ever felt embarrassed by the things that you used to like?

When you really get down to it, the interests of kids are not very diverse. There are kids who play sports, kids who do art, and probably a half-dozen other categories you can think of.  In my mind, martial-arts is one of these common interests. Given that it’s a common interest,  I’m not embarrassed that I did Kung-Fu. I am embarrassed that, as a five foot tall eleven year old with four years of glorified dance lessons, I felt like Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, and Batman were my peers.

I don’t mean to insult martial arts in general (that may be the topic of another essay) or my specific kwoon. I have great memories from Kung-Fu; I loved the teacher, my classmates, and at the time, I thought the uniform was awesome. I started taking lessons in 3rd grade. At the time, they were held in my classroom after school, although eventually the teacher upgraded to his own building.

There were a lot of rituals in the class. We had to wear a uniform consisting of our special shirt, sweatpants, jacket, sash, and Feiyue shoes. We had to address the teacher in a certain way and bow before entering and exiting the studio. We also had to memorize paragraphs of philosophy. But the worst part of all was the forms. These are sequences of punches, kicks, and blocks that we had to memorize and perform, but really, they just look like dances (with required grunting).

The kids’ classes were pretty laid-back. We played a lot of games like dodgeball and we did obstacle courses. We spent a lot of time practicing punching and kicking and occasionally we would spar. The sparring was occasional because we would instantly forget everything we had learned and it quickly devolved into wrestling. While I can’t recall every drill that we did, I do remember a particularly humiliating one. It was a five minute “air fight,” which involves randomly punching, kicking, and blocking the air for five minutes. Even ten year old me knew that that was lame. 

In addition to the normal classes, I also took weapons classes. These were once a week (I think) and every few months we would learn a new “weapon.” The “weapons” that I learned were the fan, cane, nunchucks, and staff. Other than the staff, none of these weapons had very practical uses, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like a dangerous killing machine. I don’t blame the teacher for this -- I wouldn’t expect him to give a room of fifth graders handguns, and even if he had explained that the weapons were primarily artistic, I wouldn’t have listened.

Another special class I took was the demonstration team. We were a group of about six kids who would go to community events and perform demonstrations to recruit new students. As with the other classes, this was a lot of fun. We designed our own forms and got special jackets. I remember performing at the Sweetcorn Festival, in parades, and in promotional videos. While I know I was young and nobody even took notice, I can’t help but be embarrassed that I felt qualified to show off my skills in public.

I ended up quitting Kung-Fu some time in seventh grade. At that point I was starting to feel embarrassed by it all, and I was in the adult classes, which lacked both the friends and activities that had made Kung-Fu so exciting. I still have my black belt certificate hanging on my bedroom wall. It reminds me of all the fun times I had, but it also serves as a reminder against excess pride. I still feel happy about my accomplishments, but I try not to brag about anything because I know that I will look just as silly as a chubby 10 year old who thinks there’s a good chance he’s the reincarnation of Bruce Lee.