Warning: This story contains special powers and magic. It also has threesomes.
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When I was just a lad, my father took charge of my education. My basketball education, that is. He seemed obsessed with it, although I was too young to realize it at the time. He was my dad, and boys do what their dads want, without thinking.
The strange thing about it was that my dad focused exclusively on ball handling: dribbling, and basketball moves to get around defenders. When I got older, I grew, and by the time I was 12, I was already quite tall for my age, looming over my friends at the height of 5'11." Only then, did my father put up a hoop in our driveway and start to teach me how to shoot the basketball. I was lousy.
We kept at it, every day after school, and for hours at a time on the weekend, and I got better, but I never got good. I stopped growing the next year, at 6 feet, but my friends continued to grow. Some of them caught up with my height and quite a few surpassed me. I got recruited to the high school basketball team nevertheless, and given my skill with the ball, and my sudden lack of comparative height, I was given the position of guard.
My dad's training changed, the day after my seventeenth birthday, during my junior year in high school. He kept telling me to focus on the ball. "Make yourself one with the ball," he told me countless times. I remained a poor shot. After some time, maybe two months of this, he told me that I had to "want the ball to go through the hoop." Of course, I wanted that! I did not understand. I remained a poor shot.
Finally, as the beginning of the season approached, my dad told me his secret. He said, "You need to will the ball through the hoop. Concentrate so hard that the ball becomes one with you and it will bend to your will."
My dad had trained me so hard that I understood what he was saying. I stood at the free throw line, concentrated, and missed. "Again," my dad said. We stood there for three hours before I got it. I swished the ball.
Was it luck? "Let's see," my Dad said. He bounced the ball to me and I steadied myself, bounced the ball in front of me a few times, took aim, and missed. "Shoot as soon as you touch the ball, son," my dad said, "And while the ball is in flight, will it through the hoop. You will have to concentrate hard for it to work."
I tried, many times that afternoon, and failed most of them. I was discouraged. My dad was undaunted. We tried again the next day. And the next day. And the day after that. The fifth day it rained all day, and we spent the late afternoon talking in the living room. "You have to will the ball through the hoop," he said for what was probably the 300th time.
"Dad, that's not working," I said.
"It will," my dad said.
"Yeah? Why don't you show me?" I said.
"Okay," my dad said, as he crumpled up a piece of newspaper into what resembled the shape of a ball. "Choose an impossible shot for me," he commanded.
I said, "Okay, Dad. Throw the newspaper wad into the coffee cup on the table." The table was maybe 15 feet away. The coffee cup was empty, left over from lunch. The wad was the size of the cup. He would have to have a perfect swish to make the shot. It was truly impossible.
"Eyes open, or closed?" my dad asked, teasing me.
I laughed. "First time, eyes open. I want to give you a chance," I said. "Although it's not much of one."
My dad carelessly tossed the newspaper wad into the air, mimicking a jump shot. It went right across the room and 'swished' into the coffee cup. I was astonished.
I retrieved the wad. "Again," I said, as I handed the wad to him. He did it again. We repeated this, and he ended up swishing the newspaper wad into the coffee cup five times in a row. "Now do it with your eyes closed," I said. He closed his eyes, gave it a toss, and it was another swish.
"How?" I asked, by this time so flabbergasted I was barely capable of speech.
"I willed it into the cup," was all he would say.
The weather cleared and the next day I made forty-five three throws in a row. The last forty of them were swished. "You're willing the ball in?" my father said. I nodded, proud of myself. That evening I swished the same newspaper wad into the same coffee cup my father had swished the previous day. I should have checked to make sure the cup was empty first, however, and my mom had a minor explosion at the resulting mess. I helped her clean it up. My father just smiled.
The next day we practiced three point shots. It seemed that as long as I concentrated and I willed the ball to go through the hoop, not only could I not miss, I swished my shots. All of them.
The next week my father taught me how to shoot while moving, or jumping, and how to bank my shots. I now felt as if I were a natural talent. I never missed.
The last lesson was how to get by a defender, to get open to take one of my 'can't miss' shots. This was the trickiest part. The coach had told us to watch the mid-section of the defender, not his eyes. My father told me the opposite. "You have to use the concentration you use with the ball in order to get into their minds," he said. "Suddenly you will know what he thinks you will do, and then do something else."
My father asked a tall friend, who had played basketball in college, and one year even as a pro, to come over and to help. His friend and I practiced for four days straight before I learned how to get inside his mind, and after that, I got by him every single time. His friend was stunned. "Your son is a natural," he said, and this time both my father and I smiled.
I got switched from a playmaking guard to a point guard, and quickly I became the go-to guy on the team, and the leading scorer. I was scoring 40 to 50 points per game, and that is huge for high school. Nobody could stop me. My father had warned me to miss the occasional shot, because being perfect was not believable. My shooting percentage was 85%. It would have been 90%, but I occasionally had my shots blocked, being only 6 feet tall.
When I graduated high school, I was a sports hero, and everyone liked me, including the girls. That's when my dad told me the basketball thing was only life training. "I wanted to teach you the power of your mind. Probably you know by now that you have special powers (I did not know this). You can will objects to do what you want them to do, and you can see into other people's minds. Use this power carefully, and do not abuse it. Above all, do not cheat in college!" He then told me not to play basketball in college. He wanted me to concentrate on my studies.
Some more discussion led to my father's grand plan. "Being able to see into people's minds will make you a big success in business. Be sure to learn in college, so you have the knowledge to be useful in business, and then with your special power you will go far," my dad told me.
Throughout my times with my dad the subject of girls and sex never came up. I was glad. I did not feel comfortable discussing sex with my parents. I was interested in sex. The coach had warned us that sex with girls can ruin our concentration and dedication to the game. Everyone else ignored him, and according to my teammates' stories, anyway, I was the only virgin on the team.
We were always around the cheerleaders, and I was the star of the team. I guess I'm not especially handsome, but if girls like men's bodies half as much as we men like theirs, then at least my body must have had some sex appeal. I summoned all my courage and approached Stephanie, a blond cheerleader with a great body who was in a lot of my honors classes at school. She always had a smile for me. I asked her out.
Stephanie was surprised, and she looked at me. She was silent, while I was dying inside. I heard her say, "Why didn't he ask out Alexis? She had a crush on him. He could have gotten laid. Probably he does not know. He is so innocent, so naïve." This was hopelessly rude, but while it was her voice I heard, I heard it in my brain, but through my ears, and her lips had not moved. Finally, she spoke. She said, "Sure, Josh. I'd love to."
I took her out, and it was pleasant, and I enjoyed drinking in her beauty that evening, and I felt important to have such a pretty girl as my date. When I took her home, I tried to kiss her goodnight, and she let me, but her kiss told me she had not wanted to kiss me. Then again her voice entered my head and said, 'I hope he does not ask me out again. I don't want to hurt his feelings.'