She gave an uneasy smile back to me as she started to look around the arcade some more, “Ummm,.. How about basketball?” She pointed to the basketball arcade game in the back-right corner by the skee ball games.
“You sure? I’m kind of a goat in basketball.” (I am most definitely not).
“Hahaha I’m sure of it now. You seem to be reallyyy confident in that answer. Oh, and the person who said that we’re supposed to be worry free today was pretty smart. You should listen to them more often.” She said sarcastically as she started walking over to the basketball games.
“Oh really?” I started walking slowly behind her. She picked up on me again. She saw right through my false confidence. Though I guess I wasn’t trying that hard to hide it. I’m sure an easy win will pick her mood up.
Sandy skipped confidently to the corner, which was in stark contrast to my nonchalant slow walk. Sandy caught the attention of the teen and preteens as she passed by them, and they ignored me following her. People are so easy, but most of them won’t even talk to her. People think that just by wishing for something, it will magically happen while doing nothing to make it happen with their own efforts. Even then, a lot of people still have stuff handed to them because of their looks or social status. That’s just the way the world works. Though I can’t say I’m not happy they don’t have the nerve to talk to her randomly.
By the time we got our way to the basketball game, we picked up a few spectators for the match. When Sandy got to the game, she turned around and pointed to me. She bore me down with her sarcastic smile and told me, “You’re going first.”
Wanting my embarrassment to be limited as few of people as possible, I retorted to her as I took the tokens, “I thought it’s supposed to be ladies first?”
She put her body to my side and her hand on my back as she pushed me forward to the game as she fired back, “It’s 2022, we’re breaking stereotypes.”
“Ahh, really?” I commented as I put the tokens into the machine to drop the basketballs down.
I had a minute to make as many baskets as I could, and the high score was seventy. I know I’m not going to make anywhere close to that, so I’m just hoping I make at least ten. As the basketballs started to roll down into my grasp, I fumbled to decide which basketball to heave up first. So many choices! Do I go with the one with a bump in it, the one with the patchy leather, or the one that was so worn it was completely slick?
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I deliberately took my time to shoot, because I wanted to limit my embarrassment, but Sandy eventually shouted to me, “C’mon Mark! You’re going to be out of time before you even get a shot off!”
I sighed and grabbed the ball with patchy leather and rubbed it in my hands to get a feel of it. When I eventually shot it, my shooting form was horrendous. I grabbed the ball up to my chest, and I unathletically and clumsily heaved them to the basket. It was a miss after miss, brick after brick.
Bang Bang
The basketballs kept banging off the back of the game or off the front or back of the rim. I could hear the bystanders around me start to giggle, and my face started to burn red from embarrassment. “Take your time and loosen up.” Sandy advised me as she moved to my side and put her hands on the ball to show me where to hold it. “You’re way too stiff, so you’re putting too much strength into the shot.”
She held out the ball to give to me, and I took it. By now the time for the game had already been up, but since this basketball had already fallen before the Honk of the horn sounded, it didn’t get stuck in the machine. Sandy put her hands over mine and placed my hands where she put hers. “Now deep breath and be loose!” She instructed me.
My goal has completely changed from the moment I put the tokens into the machine to now from not embarrassing myself to just making one basket. I took a deep breath to try and calm my nervously beating heart, and let the ball go.
Swish
I was elated that the ball finally went through the hoop even though the minute was up right I didn’t get any more balls. With the way Sandy reacted to me making the shot, you’d think I just hit the buzzer beater for the new record on the game. Her excitement rubbed off on me as I got caught in the moment and smiled at the accomplishment of hitting a shot. I completely forgot about the weird stares of the spectators there for Sandy and could only look at her as she clapped for me and exclaimed, “See?! All it took was for you to relax and lighten up!”
Trying to keep up the positive energy, I sarcastically asked her while I leaned against the machine, “Think you can beat that? Told you that I was kinda goated in basketball.”
Sandy shuffled back a little bit, taken aback by my question, and told me while her mouth was agape from nerve of my response, “Oh really hahaha? Move on back and witness a master at work, okay?”
She dusted off her shoulders as she moved me away from the arcade game. She handed me her wallet and phone to hold, and I went back to be right in front of the people watching Sandy. I could feel their eyes bare down on me as I watched Sandy put the tokens into the machine and prepared for the basketballs to fall down. I put my hands in my pockets to feel a little more comfortable with the boring eyes, and as Sandy started on the game hitting shot after shot, a teenager, maybe sixteen or seventeen, came up and asked me with the brash confidence and sarcasm most high schoolers have, “Nice shots over there man. I can tell you been putting in some work.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great…” I lamented to myself.