The men’s basketball coach at my alma mater lost his shit a few days ago at the end of the game. If you follow American sports at all, you’d at least have seen or heard a headline about Coach Howard smacking the opposing team’s assistant coach upside the head, triggering a brief melee. For the next twenty-four hours, he wasn’t apologetic, just stuck to the facts from his point of view, and I wasn’t surprised at all by this.
My father was notorious for his temper and fights. He threatened referees at my older brother’s high school basketball games; he threatened umpires at his slow-pitch softball games. Slow. Pitch. Softball.
Growing up in that culture of inflating the importance of amateur sports to threats of violence, it didn’t surprise me at all to see Coach Howard lose his shit over a trifling matter that had already been decided. He has been an elite athlete his entire life, and has dedicated his life to basketball. What surprised me was how little was my reaction.
At first, I was willing to chalk it up to an intense love of the game, so that, if an umpire missed a call, nothing else mattered except challenging him to a fist fight. Looking back, it seems silly of my father to call an umpire blind as a bat in one breath, and then threaten to punch him in the nose the next. How sporting is it to punch a blind person in the nose?
I was never as intense as my father (probably to his disappointment) but I learned to live, and embrace, that anger culture growing up, and its taken me a bit of therapy and years of practicing Stoicism to tame the beast and deal with the triggers. Like when someone cuts a long line at a venue, my pulse quickens, and I can hear my father shouting, “Hey buddy!” I can picture his fists clenching and the ligaments in his neck stretching in preparation…I have to ask myself if it matters. Can I just make a snide remark to the person in line behind me, and thereby regain enough pride to go about my life?
Once, we were at Epcot in Orlando waiting to tour the Grand Mayan Pyramid (I don’t think it exists anymore which, when you think about it, is the perfect–and heartbreaking–tribute the Mayan culture). It was my father, mother and us three, teenage brothers, standing there waiting patiently, when two men in their late 20s cut in line in front of us. Immediately, my father shouted, “Hey buddy! You’re not cutting in front of me.”
The bigger of the two guys looked my father over, saw he had size to spare against him, and said, “Back off gramps. You’re too old to fight.”
My father pointed at my oldest brother, just turned eighteen, and said, “Well how about him. You want to fight him?”
Without pause, he pointed at my middle brother, age sixteen, and said, “How about this one?”
He pointed at me next, all of thirteen years old, and said, “You want to fight that one? Take your pick, but you’re not cutting in front of us.”
The two guys shared a look and retreated, leaving the line entirely.
Once triggered, my old man was a whole lot of fury in an average sized, middle-aged body.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
The bright side of all this is that, having worked through it, I see the triggers, tempers, and seething rage in its various forms all the time. Then I try to infuse it in my stories, along with a bit of humor.
Speaking of humor, I’m taking a workshop this weekend from St. Nell’s, a humor writing residency in Pennsylvania. I’m hoping to learn some advanced technique on advancing story through humor. The instructor has published twenty satire in pieces in McSweeney’s–so while I’m grateful to learn from her, I’m also insanely jealous.
I’m going to leverage what I learn into an application for a master class on humor writing from yet another great humor writer who has been on staff at the New Yorker, and has several books to her name.
Upcoming Books and Stuff
Now that I’ve finished fixing typos, I’ve dropped the price on both my recent books. If you’ve been on the fence, jump the hell off. Remember, they’re available wherever fine books are sold:
Ruthless: When a cop’s daughter investigates her sister’s death, the truth takes her over the thin blue line, into a battle for her life.
Maybe You’d Like
I’m sharing this book by a fellow author…with these reviews I’d be happy to call my own:
“Once the action begins, there’s only one thing to do.. FINISH THE BOOK!”
“This book had me hooked from the first page!”
“Brilliant read, great suspense and action. Wonderful world building.”
Recommended Reading
My fiction reading slowed a bit this month as I’m also reading four different non-fiction books. I don’t recommend this approach. I hope to tell you about at least one of them next time.
Next Picayune
I still haven’t finished that story about my neighbor, Joe. Stay tuned.
Thanks for reading the Mickey Picayune.
All the best,
–mickey
P.S. Forward this to a friend who might enjoy it, and tell them to click the link at the bottom ==> https://sendfox.com/mickey/