Dear New York

Long Island, to be more specific.

It's where I grew up. A place full of fond memories, familiar smells, delicious foods, and ghosts of friends past. The friends aren't deceased, but the versions of them that exist in my mind are long gone. We are all older, balder, fatter, except for the ones with bad toupes and those who can't blink anymore because of one too many plastic surgeries. Judging by their Facebook profiles, many of them, like me, have moved off the island to settle elsewhere. Others didn't wander too many miles from home.

As the plane flew low today under the canopy of clouds covering Brooklyn, I watched the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island pass by. The skyline of Manhattan presented itself, the new Freedom Towers standing tall in the Financial District not far from Battery Park where I once attended an Earth Day celebration in the early 90s with college friends.

It's amazing to me how many baseball diamonds you spot from a few hundred feet up as you pass over Queens. In some places you can see six or seven fields all squeezed in next to each other with shallow outfields and barely any room for bleachers. Baseball was the sport I followed most closely during my formative years. The pastoral simplicity of the game, bursts of excitement punctuating a two-hour pitchers' duel, the crescendo of the crowd as the count runs to 3-2 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and the tying run on second. It's a shame our nation is losing its patience for the game.

What strikes me hardest each time I return for a visit with family, or in this case for work, is the overwhelming sense of claustrophobia.

Maybe it all relates back to that same feeling you get when you return to your old elementary school. You'd swear someone came in and lowered all the water fountains and miniaturized the toilets. The cavernous hallways have narrowed and the ceilings hang far too low. Even the people seem smaller.

That's how every block looks to me as I drive through once familiar neighborhoods. Smaller, less familiar, less significant. The landmarks have all changed, empty lots now have two or three houses crammed onto them, and I unkowingly speed right by the house in which I spent the first two decades of my life. I can't even be sure I could walk the path from the old house to McVey Elementary School, something I did hundreds of times as a kid, without the help of my GPS.

A short time on Long Island is all it takes to remind me how much I enjoy the openness of my semi-rural North Carolina community. Much like my time in college at Plattsburgh, NY, I am smitten by the relaxed nature of the people and the elbow room we have between us.

I can't help feeling a little sorry for the people who never left Long Island, but I'm sure many of them would feel sorry for me for leaving, if they ever had cause to think about me. Long Island was a wonderful place to grow up, and there is nothing about my childhood I would change. I suppose, if we're fortunate enough, we all just naturally gravitate to the place we feel most comfortable.

If we're really lucky, there might even be a few baseball fields nearby.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Hockey?

So, the Italian and the German want to play hockey next year. More specifically, they want to play roller hockey. We do live in the Sandhills of North Carolina, after all. Ponds crusted over with four inches of ice are in short supply.

In preparation for the spring municipal elementary-age roller hockey season, our boys have been working since summer to hone their roller blading skills. The Italian, by this point, glides effortlessly along, executing hairpin turns and managing slopes and rough terrain with uncharacteristic grace. The German hasn't yet let go of his fear of falling, so he plods along, one foot at a time, arms flung out like some creature from a low-budget 1970s roller disco zombie movie.

The biggest surprise is the Italian, normally, is the uncoordinated twin. He's skinny and strong, but also clumsy and impatient. Take swimming, for instance. The cherubic German slices through a pool with the mechanical consistency of a precision machine while his Italian brother barely makes half the progress as he flails at the water like it's challenged him to a no-rules death match.

My greatest concern about the two of them playing hockey isn't the threat of injury from flying pucks, high-sticking, or hot-headed opponents. It isn't even the smell from sweat-soaked socks, shirts, and assorted hockey equipment. What concerns me most is my lack of understanding about hockey.

Please allow me to drive that point home a little more emphatically: What concerns me most is my complete and absolute lack of knowledge about anything in any way related to hockey, or just about any sport ever invented by man or beast. If it involves teams, sides, competitiveness, a ball, a basket, a net, a stick, a bat, a horse, a jersey, or any combination of those items, I probably don't understand it and won't find any way to feign interest in it.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid my indifference toward sports has rubbed off on my sons. It's possible they are the only people in the world who know less and care less about sports than I. Not that we haven't tried to get them interested over the years.

We tried soccer when they were about five. Why soccer? I can't recall. Personally, I find it more exciting to count the hairs in my nose than to watch a soccer match. The boys seemed interested, at first, but after a few games we realized the German was more interested in wearing the little orange cones like a hat, and the Italian was more focused on chatting up the girls on the field of play than paying attention to the ball.

Baseball the next year wasn't much of an improvement, and neither was golf the year after that. Any interest they showed early on quickly waned. Not being a sporty kind of guy, I can't say that I was altogether disappointed.

But now they want to play hockey, a sport as comprehensible to me as quantum physics. With any luck, this phase will soon pass and I'll find myself sitting in their school auditorium watching them perform supporting roles in "Beauty and the Beast," or some other scaled-down version of an off-Broadway play with homemade costumes and paper mache backdrops. I understand paper mache and can stitch a mean hem, so these things make sense to me.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Sports Dummy

Okay. Don't tell anyone, but I'm not exactly what you might call a sports fanatic.

I know. Shocking, isn't it?

All my life, the appeal of organized sports has pretty much eluded me. One of my "manly" genes must never have kicked in when I was an adolescent, leaving me more likely to shop at the mall than hang out at the municipal basketball courts.

Even the few sports that have endeared themselves to me have been left by the wayside. Baseball, for instance. During my teen years, few things were as important as rushing home from school to watch the Mets on channel 9. A really great day meant I could catch the end of the first game of a double-header, followed by the entire second game. These days I'm lucky to make it to one Durham Bulls game each summer.

The thing is, I "get" baseball. It makes sense to me. From the pitcher-batter duel to the sudden burst of activity in the field when a ball is struck into play, I understand the purpose of both the individual performances and the collaborative efforts of the offensive and defensive units. When two equally-matched teams meet on the field, it can be a wonderous thing to experience.

I just don't feel the same way about basketball, hockey, NASCAR, or even football.

When I was in college at SUNY Plattsburgh in upstate New York, our university had one of the best hockey teams in its division. I think it cost all of $6 for students to attend the games back then. You know how many I went to? None. You know why? Because I couldn't possibly, not even if you paid me to try, care less about hockey. When the NY Islanders won the Stanley Cup season after season, I lived only a short bike ride from their arena. I might have high-fived an enthusiastic friend or two at school, but it meant nothing to me.

Football games can be infectious, thanks to the repetitive scattering of bodies in every direction and the potential for dramatic plays, but that's about it for me. I know more about the sport than, say, my mother, but significantly less about it than the average 10-year-old boy.

Sports like basketball, hockey and soccer share the same problem, for my tastes. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... After about five minutes, I'm done. Sure, if I had a deeper understanding of the nuances I might appreciate them more, but I'm just not interested.

At least racecar drivers keep things moving in the same direction. Although, while that might ameliorate my indignation at the zero net distance I associate with the back-and-forth sports, I still don't understand the excitement of someone driving hundreds of miles in a tight circle. Go to the mall and try walking just hundreds of yards in a tight circle and you'll be talking to security before you reach lap 50.

So, there you have it. I have confessed to being less testosterone-driven than the average man.

You can hold out hope for me, if you want to, but you should know something. This July, when we pack up the kids and drive to Durham for our annual Bulls game, I'll probably be just as excited about shopping at Streets at Southpoint mall before the game as I will be about attending the game itself.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler