Freddogg Off The Chain

Hey Fredricks do you think this is funny because I don’t think it’s funny at all. I’m trying to win a game here, not provide you with comedy material, so answer me, ”Do you think this is funny?”

Temple freshman basketball coach Skippy Wilson was down on one knee and up in my face—and he could be manically scary looking-- as the Owl freshman team averted almost certain overtime defeat when my roommate Johnny Kerr took the ball from the official under the Saint Joe’s basket and threw it right to a wide open Hawk player at the foul line. The kid drove in and clanked the lay-up.

I turned to the 6’9” white guy next to me Skippy had found hanging onto the back of a fire truck in North Philly, and said, ”John was almost the goat in this game. Holy Christ!” And then there was Skippy in my face!

I had been recruited to Temple on the advice of Skippy who was a Philadelphia Catholic League basketball official. I was the Most Valuable Player in the League, averaged 25 points a game, and was a hot recruit coming in. But knee surgery and a big boned German body whose double recessives were starting to kick in had me looking like a huge mistake. I had turned down football offers to Notre Dame and Michigan to play Big Five Philadelphia basketball but now on the third floor of Temple’s South Hall on a Tuesday afternoon sitting on a metal folding chair looking across the gym at my recently widowed mother I was simply, ”Do you think this is funny guy”.

I would like recount that I said, ”Not as funny as your face” or “get out of my fucking face” but I had been kick started into an identity crises and that mother fucker was as real as the word BIKE on my jock. I just sat there, the high school star turned big fucking non valuable loser.

After the game I said goodbye to my mother who had always told me, ”you are so smart please go find yourself” so I grabbed a ball and for the next two hours I just shot and shot more and I knew I was the best pure shooter in the city but even head coach and former NCAA Hall of Famer Harry Litwack had told me, ”Shooting is a cheap skill. Anyone can shoot. I’m 70 years old and I can still shoot better than you. You think that’s funny?”

I left the gym, passed the John Henry looking guy who sold dress socks at the entrance to the subway at Columbia Avenue and Broad Street and went down and got on a train. I rode all the way north then all the way south back and fourth for hours. There were nothing but dangerous characters on platforms and occasionally one came into my car. I didn’t care and I didn’t think it was funny although normally I’d have found something funny about the whole picture of Mr. Hero and Star turned into instant loser guy.

My discovery of self identity was complete when I realized that the fake I.D. in my wallet of Tom Kirby who was black was actually not me. But also that the bottom line is ‘It’s All Funny and funny is what I do best so fuck Skippy and anyone else in power or with a gun who wants to ask me, ”You think this is funny?”

You had better believe that in an expanding intelliegently designed universe that planet earth is Comedy Central.

Peace

Funny Freddogg