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.