The Rubber Hits the Road

Yesterday, when I was in a bookstore, I had wanted to order a book, so I walked over to a counter in the shop called "Bestellungen,” or “ordered books.” I understood, of course, that this was the counter where customers picked up books that hadn’t been in stock but had been ordered. I thought maybe, just maybe, one could also order a book at the “ordered books” counter. When I asked the clerk if this were possible, she looked at me, very coldly, in my opinion, and tersely said, “No. You order books at the ‘Information’ counter.” Not one hint of feeling was in her face.

Then, later in the day I was playing basketball. I play basketball every Monday with a group of guys. One of my favorite guys from this group is Christian. Christian is a happy-go-lucky person who loves doing sports, likes American culture and likes to kid around with me. He is also a very fair basketball player. In fact, one thing that I like about going head-to-head with Christian is that he hardly ever fouls, and if he does foul, he often calls it on himself.

When we began to play yesterday, everything started out as normal. We were all playing at a light to medium intensity level and my energy level seemed good. At one point, Christian, who was on the opposing team from me, was under the basket. He had just missed a shot, gotten his own rebound and was trying the shot again. Some other players on my team and I were circling him with our arms in the air, making the shot very difficult. I guess Christian felt as though I was fouling him because he gave me a hard shove before he shot the ball again.

After the play was over, I addressed the situation.

“I’m not fouling you,” I said.

“Yeah sure,” he said, sarcastically.

Sensing a bit of tension, another player cut in: “OK, OK.,” he said.  “Let’s just keep playing."

And we did. But I was a little mad. After all, Christian had just shoved me and accused me of fouling him when I hadn’t, or at least I thought I hadn’t.

At the other end of the floor I got the ball near the basket. Tensions were high. Christian was guarding me, but had misjudged the action I planned to take and I was able to spin off him and drive closer to the basket. As I was taking the layup, I felt the ball being stuffed from behind as well as part of Christian’s weight coming down on my back. The ball block was legal but coming down on my back wasn’t -- that was a foul. Christian had played over aggressively in his effort to stop me. After the play, all the players were silent for a moment. I felt anger rise up in me, anger that I wanted to take out on Christian and the players on his team. But I was able to calm myself down. Here’s where the rubber hits the road, Chad, I thought. These are the situations you should really save you patience for; here is the test. Which way are you going to go?

I continued to play in an unaggressive way and on the successive plays Christian did too.