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By KEVIN McGEEVER
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 3, 2001
Denial: the mature man's workout
ST. PETERSBURG -- So far, the descent from my athletic peak has been relatively painless.
No torn ligaments, no bitter resistance. I like to think of this time as more graceful denouement than naked truth.
Yeah, right.
The fact is, I still hold out hope of cheating time.
Lift weights a little. Run a little. Sit-ups. Hoops with my son. Check myself out in the bathroom mirror.
Several years ago, my competitive basketball career had to be euthanized. Even the melodramatic recount of that event includes some leftover ego: "So I cross over my dribble, beat my man and rise up . . . (the shooting arm forms the textbook 90-degree angle as a visual reinforcement that, yo, this boy could play) . . . and I shoot the ball over the basket."
See? One humiliation preceded by four congratulations. I still haven't let go.
The children have no such delusions. Their dad is 44 years old. They have no memory of an athlete, though he still is competitive sometimes -- at card games. But the old man does have entertainment value.
All of which brings me and my flimsily held jockhood to a child's birthday party recently at a city pool.
"Dad, can you do a cannonball for us?" My son.
"Please! C'mon," other urchins yell.
"Sure. All right." (As if there were ever a doubt.)
I can now report that the 3-meter platform is HIGH. More hindsight: From my eye level to the surface of the water is about 15 feet. I think I muttered "Jaysis."
I jumped. Force equals mass times acceleration, a mathematically gifted colleague tells me. Rough calculations indicate the impact of the freckled load hitting the water was about 600 pounds.
If only I hadn't peeked off to one side.
That nervous tilt of my head changed my body angle and, rather than going in feet first, I broke the water mostly with one meaty thigh. What is that sound? A windshield shattering? The puncturing of taut cellophane?
Whatever. The kids -- mostly 8 and 9 years old -- were impressed. They were my target audience, right? The lifeguard knew better: "How did that feel?"
Still, I wasn't ready to let go.
The springboard. A swan dive. No problem.
And I could tell from the quieter, less traumatic entry that I had acquitted myself well. Hands first, then head, the feet together. The furious thrill of baptism, cooler as I knifed deeper into 12 feet of water, into silence. A sensory smorgasbord in a single second. And you know what? The rush increases exponentially when your pants fall off.
Near as I could tell, nobody saw me at the bottom of the pool, thrashing to get dressed. By Monday morning, I had a funny story to share, though it might be inferred from my retelling that, were it not for the runaway trunks, hey, pretty spiffy dive, fella.
Kevin McGeever is suburban news editor of Neighborhood Times, an edition of the St. Petersburg Times.