Of Basketball and Cristian Mason

True to my word (even though I only got a couple suggestions) I received a FANTASTIC, ALL-TIME memory from my cousin Brad. As I grow older, my memories of being really young obviously grow fuzzy and more general; it's hard to remember specific events rather than what I generally did every day. Well, one memory will remain etched in my memory with HD clarity for life: the day Cristian Mason hacked a loogie on Rocky Bowlby.

Everybody in the neighborhood passed the summers playing basketball on my hoop in my front yard (for reference purposes- this is the hoop in Sandy on Borg Drive-where I lived until I was 12). A few other kids had hoops on the street, but mine was the only one that adjusted up and down; obviously, we lowered it to 7-8' so we could dunk.

The neighborhood group was pretty unique in that we spanned a large age-range. I was roughly 10, and my cousin Brad and Cristian Mason were 14-15 range, with other kids in between somewhere (Josh Clark, Nate Carlson, Travis Weis, Seth & Travis Baker, etc). I say this is unique because I know when I was 15 I would have never spent 5 minutes with a ten year old (I did indeed think I was pretty cool becuase I had friends that were in Junior High!) I do note that Brad, Cristian, and the other neighborhood kids hadn't necessarily grown to their life-size at 15, but I for some reason was freakishly huge at that age (I reached my life-size height, but not life-size gut :), by 7th grade). All in all on any given day we had quite a few kids playing basketball in my front yard in the summer time.

One kid that usually wasn't playing with us was Chase Bowlby. For some reason, us being jerk kids as we were, we never let Chase play with us. I'm convinced looking back that it was because he was just a couple years out of the acceptable age range; he being 8 and super-small compared to my being 10 and super-huge (again, with all other guys being generally older than me). Living only a couple doors up the street, he always came down to play, and we'd always make him sit and watch (I write this thinking how I'd kick the bejeezes out of punk kids that wouldn't let my kid play with them. . . that will become relevant later).

So one day, we were playing ball and not letting Chase play as usual. Chase's dad Rocky came home from work, saw his son crying about not being able to play, and decided to come give us all a talking to about excluding him from our game. I don't remember what words were said exactly, but I do remember Cristian Mason took it upon himself (being the oldest of our group and the Bishop's son, he had more clout to say what he wanted than anybody else) to defend our actions. He was even so brash as to start yelling at Rocky. Rocky kind of got in Cristian's face (again, looking back, what was he going to do to a 15-year old kid besides yell at him? I say nothing.) and then, all-of-the-sudden, Cristian hacked up a loogie and launched it right onto Rocky's suit!

Now, reread that last sentence of that last paragraph from two different perspectives: once as a kid witnessing an all-time demoralizing insult, and once as an adult witnessing the uttermost disrespectful act a kid could possibly pull. I note that as I distinctly remember this incident launching Cristian into legendary status among the neighborhood boys, but looking at it years later from the perspective of an adult potentially being more impressed with Rocky for resisting the instinct to just knock the punk kid out (Seriously, if a teenage kid hacked a loogie on you, is it even possible that you wouldn't knock him out? I didn't think so).

Rocky didn't knock him out, but he was infuriated, "DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO DRY CLEAN THIS SUIT?!!!!! I JUST HAD THIS SUIT DRY CLEANED FOR $15!!!!!! YOU'RE GOING TO PAY FOR THIS!!!!" I assume $15 was a lot then, but regardless of the price, I've never seen somebody so mad. Needless to say, basketball was over for that day, but the legend of Cristian Mason lives on!

What a memory! I moved away a couple years later, as did lots of other kids from that street, including Cristian, Brad, and Chase. The lady that bought our house took out the hoop so when I drive by today my fondest memory is gone. I hope we didn't cause any lasting damage to either Rocky or Chase. I know Rocky hit it huge with dental insurance so I'm pretty sure things worked out just fine for him and Chase. Still, what mean kids; even though I didn't perpetuate the act, I can feel karma waiting for me when Cannon is 8 or so, for some punk kid to launch a loogie on my suit. He better have $15 handy!