Loyal readers of this weblog will no doubt recall the childhood episode detailed in Haggling at Schulman’s. Executive Summary: I pitched a fit with my mom in order to avoid the street-cred-degradation that would have resulted from wearing a pair of “irregular” Pro Keds for Seventh Grade hoops at McNelis Catholic. Not my proudest moment growing up, but sometimes, frankly, the ends do justify the means.
Roughly 30 years after this incident, I am hustling into the gym at Stanford Middle School in the fall of 2002, having left work in RTP a little later than I had planned. It’s the first game for the Seventh Grade Boy’s Basketball team that season. The Chargers are running their layup line and, while walking up the steps to my seat, I peripherally notice that one of our players doesn’t have the same model of sneakers as all the others. As the focus sharpens, I am hit with the sinking realization that youngest son Chris is indeed the outlier. Expletives deleted.
