Tuesday, January 5, 2010
9:13 PM
My Beloved Athletic Bag
At the beginning of my 8th grade year, we basketball players were told that we would need to get athletic travel bags. I can't begin to tell you how excited I was about that. I wanted one of these bags so much! So of course, I excitedly told my mom about my coach's instructions as soon as I got home that afternoon. She agreed to take me to LOOK at the bags and price them. When we pulled up in front of Diamond Sports (my absolute favorite store in the world at that time!), I started to jump out, only to be abruptly stopped by my mom. She informed me that she would be going in alone. I hotly protested of course, only to find my protestations met with her perpetual ace in the hole parental maneuver: "Either you sit your a** in this car, or I drive away and we don't even look at the damned bag."
Alrighty then.
So my mom went in alone, staying about 15 minutes, and then emerged from the store carrying a square box. Since I had never seen an athletic bag packaged in a box, my heart sank. Even though she told me that we were only pricing the bag that day, I had greatly hoped that she would go ahead and purchase the bag that day for me, as the start of basketball season was just days away. When she got to the car, I asked her if my bag was in the box but I really, truly didn't think it was because the box didn't look big enough to hold the bag I needed. She snapped at me and told me to leave the box alone because it was a set of glasses that she was planning to give to granny mom for Christmas. I don't know why I fell for that but I really did and I was heartbroken. (In case you're wondering, Diamond Sports did carry such things as glasses, etc. as it was also a hardware store) She told me that the cost of the bag was high and that she had put it on lay-a-way. She said it would be a few weeks before she could get it out. Ugh. I was just sick. Not only did I just plain want that bag more than anything in the world, but I also feared being the only one to show up for the first day of basketball practice without the bag we had been told to purchase.
On Halloween of that year, my school had it's last football game with our cross-town rivals. The next day, which would be November 1st, basketball season was officially scheduled to begin. Although jr. high bands don't normally take a pep band to their games, it was decided that for that one big rivalry game, the Honor Band would be on hand to play the fight song, etc. We were so excited. So I attended the game that night and played my horn which made me and my friends feel very grown up and special. We felt like high school kids at a high school game and taht was very exciting. Still, all evening long, I kept thinking about my athletic bag and worrying because earlier that day, our coach had reminded us that we basketball players needed to make sure we had our new bags in time for practice the next day. I worried and fretted all evening long, so much so that I couldn't even really concentrate on the game.
At the end of the night, when my mom came to the stadium to pick me up, I jumped into the car and immediately unloaded my concerns about not having my bag and asked her if there was any way in the world that she could afford to go down to the store the next day before basketball practice, and get my bag out of lay-a-way. It was finally at that moment, when she realized that depth of panic that had set in on me, that she admitted she had actually bought the bag that day when we had gone down to look at them. The item in the box had not been glasses for my grandma, but instead, my bag. I felt both greatly relieved and terminally naieve and stupid. LOL
She gave the bag to me when we got home and I was so excited for the rest of the night that I could barely sleep. I was convinced that carrying that "official" athletic bag was going to cement my rep at school as a "somebody". LOL I couldn't wait to be seen with it and besides that, the jock in me absolutely LOVED that cool little bag. It became one of my most treasured tangible possessions and I carried it proudly for the next year and guarded it with my life.
I hung onto that bag all through high school, and into college. I just couldn't part with it even though I no longer attended the school it represented. Even now, I think about that bag and wish like everything that it hadn't disappeared when my mom moved after I went away to college. I don't know what I'd do with it if I had it now but I wish I did, just the same. Like my letter sweater that I earned in high school, my jr. high athletic bag was one of those earned things that I was really proud of. I had hoped to hang onto them forever. I did manage to hang onto my letter sweater but my beautiful green bag is gone forever.
Kids around here don't even carry that same kind of bag anymore. They use those cheap, folding, collapsable bags that are made of windbreaker material rather than good, thick, genuine leather. They don't know what they're missing. Those bags are so lame. The ones that Bernie and I carried were the real deal and you couldn't buy them at your local Walmart. You had to earn them by lettering in a sport. They were a symbol of pride and hard work, and, a very treasured rite of passage for all teenage athletes in America.
* I can't find a pic of my actual bag. Obviously, I didn't attend any Jesuit school. My bag had "P***** Mu*****" printed on it. But in all other ways, my bag looked pretty identical to this one.
*Bernie, what happened to yours? I remember you had your name written in big, black letters across the top of it so no one could steal it. Also, what happened to your letter jacket? I loved that you let me wear that when I was in jr. high. When Jr. High became "middle school" they stopped ordering letter jackets for the girl athletes for some reason so I didn't get to get one and neither did my friends. So everyone, especially Reana, thought I was way cool for having one that belonged to my older brother. I owe you for that little bit of early teen status.