In the eighth grade sixty-five boys tried out for the basketball team. John Beck, one of the shortest boys, survived Coach Wooten’s first cut. That gave John hope.
Each night after practice for the next two weeks he walked home in the cold and dark, praying the same prayer:
Dear God, he prayed, please may I make the first fifteen; dear God, please may I make the first fifteen; dear, dear God, please may I make the first fifteen. He always stopped after the fifteenth repetition.
John made it through the second cut, and after practice on the day of the final cut, he was called into Coach Wooten’s office.
“Beck,” Coach Wooten said, “what am I going to do with you? You aren’t tall and you aren’t fast. I don’t even know if you can shoot.”
“I don’t know, Coach,” John said. “Does that mean I’m cut?”
“No,” Coach Wooten said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you stick it out on the practice squad. Maybe you can work your way into a few road games.”
So John was on the squad as the seventeenth man. Twice Coach Wooten let him suit up for trips to other schools. He never let him suit up for a home game. John didn’t log enough playing time for the felt letter he could wear on his athletic jacket.
That spring John decided he liked a pretty girl named Susan. He thought she was classy. The first time he walked her home he felt she wanted a kiss. He almost did, then he didn’t. They had a date to go to a Y teen dance on Saturday. He thought he could kiss her then. When he went to her house on Saturday she wasn’t ready to go. Her mother said she would be ready in a minute and went in the bedroom to talk to her. John could hear Susan crying in the bedroom. He didn’t know why. A few minutes passed and Susan came out as if she hadn’t been crying and they went to the dance. John had a good time at the dance and thought Susan did too. He didn’t get a chance to kiss her but asked her out for the next Saturday. She said she couldn’t. Later that week he asked her out again and she said to please not ask her.
Two years later, while a sophomore in high school, John began dating a girl named Karen, even though she wasn’t one of the popular girls.
Five years later, one sunny spring day, John read African Genesis. He was now a sophomore in college and beginning to read on his own.
“The social order of the jackdaw,” he read, “an extremely intelligent bird, indicates that a social animal does not only seek to dominate his fellows but the degree to which he succeeds obtains for him in the eyes of others his social ranking.
“Further,” he read, “once established this ranking remains permanent throughout one’s lifetime regardless of how early it was established in one’s lifetime.”
John couldn’t believe what he had read. For three days, refusing all talk to leave his room, he lay in bed listening to rock ’n’ roll on his radio.