?Marcus D. Savage I’m Going Home It was one of those days. Those days where the weather outside was sticky hot. Those days where as soon as you step outside, a coat of sweat quickly emerged on your face and trickled down your face. With a basketball in hand, a subtle smirk appeared on my face as I noticed my neighbor, Pat, was already outside playing basketball. He was always one step ahead of me, an inch taller than me, a year older than me, and a second faster than me. He was always, in my eyes, a rival, even if he never acknowledged it to me. Today was supposed to be like any other summer day: we were going to shoot around, drink from the water hose faucet, and end the evening with multiple games of one-on-one. It was supposed to be like any other summer day. I played Pat one-on-one on several occasions. Each game had its own personality, its own story. The first time I played Pat, I was about four or five years old. My family had just moved into the neighborhood and I was trying to get accustomed to meeting new people. At that point, I had never played an organized game of basketball before. I learned the game from Pat, his older brother Fred, and their dad after we moved to the neighborhood. Needless to say, Pat showed absolutely no mercy in providing me with my first taste of defeat. I didn’t take defeat too well, because I definitely remember taking my ball and telling Pat “I’m going home!” By no means was I a crybaby. That was something that I remember my dad telling me never to be. I just wanted to imitate everything related to basketball that I saw on television. At the time, I didn’t understand why I wasn’t able to imitate Michael Jordan’s signature fade-away shot. I believed I could do it, but why couldn’t I? The only other option I had was to practice. They taught “practice makes perfect” at my school and I took the concept to heart. I practiced and practiced and practiced but I just could not beat Pat in a game of one on one. It got to the point where it wasn’t even about basketball anymore. I was beginning to believe that Pat was better than me at all aspects of life. While I was stuck wearing the same gym shoes every time we played a game, Pat had all of these newest shoes. While I was stuck with my dad who could only buy me tapes from the 1970s about how to learn to play basketball, Pat’s dad was an expert at basketball (he had played in college) and was able to teach him the skills of the game. While I was stuck with an older sister who only gawked at basketball players, Pat had an older brother who dunked on basketball players. I was beginning to realize that Pat had some sort of God-given advantage over me. It was unfair. As I grew older and became more serious about basketball, my emotions began to take over. I was obviously getting better at the game because I practiced almost daily. My father noticed my efforts and pushed me to continue to get better. I wasn’t sure if I loved basketball itself or simply the competitive nature that came with it. Regardless, I allowed my father to push me. By the age of thirteen, my friendship with Pat was not nearly as strong as it was when we were younger. I’m not sure if our interests were totally different, because he no longer came to our door and asked if I could come outside to play basketball. On the contrary, I wasn’t doing the same for him either. However, something in me made me want to go outside when I saw him and one of his basketball teammates, Farrakhan, playing a game of one-on-one during the summer of my thirteenth birthday. I stepped outside into the summer’s heat, walking down the driveway with a blank but confident expression on my face. “Y’all playing a game?” I asked. “Aw shit, you tryna get in on this ass whooping too?” Pat said with a smirk on his face. I smiled and chuckled. “Hell nah, you ain’t gone beat