I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: sports

  • how could I skip when I was two and seventy

    how could I skip when I was two and seventy


    Three years ago I published these reflections (with pictures) a week before my 72nd. birthday. I don’t know why, but I thought they deserved a second read. We’ll see what you think?

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    I had a very sweet Happy Birthday message today on my Columbia High Class of 1964 (Texas) message board from one of my boyfriends who I noticed sent me birthday greetings for the past 3 years on this website which I never check. Thanks so much to Tim for remembering me. I immediately went to Facebook and added him as a friend so that I can send him birthday greetings on whatever day his might be. I confess I have been remiss in wishing others a Happy Birthday unless I am prompted to do so by the Big Brother of Facebook who is forever watching over me.

    I am struck by how soon my 72nd. birthday will be…April 21, one week from today. Sweet Lady Gaga, as The Red Man famously said, how did this happen. My first birthday card came from my personal Medicine Man Dr. Martin and his entire staff. These are the people who see me most frequently, and I appreciated the Life is Meant to Live and be Celebrated sentiments. I figure if they’re hopeful for my future, I should be, too.

    I’ve received not one, but two, birthday cards from former President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center, both of which were quite lovely and one signed by the President himself. Why two, you might ask, as I did. And then, of course, my bank ATM machines have been unusually prompt on good wishes whenever I’ve made withdrawals in April which I assume has something to do with their corporate guilt for the outrageous service charges they favor me with every month.

    The message board for the 1964 Columbia High School graduating class in West Columbia, Texas took me back 54 years to that senior year when I was about to graduate from high school and leave my little town of Brazoria, Texas that was 15 miles from the Gulf Coast for summer school at the University of Texas in Austin 90 miles away. Big changes were on the way for me, but take a look at the images of my senior year when I was voted by my fully segregated all white 90+ students class as the Best All Round favorite, or as my dad invariably teased me by saying, she was the best all the way around.

    Return with me to those thrilling days of yesteryear when my mother was always so happy for me to be dating a boy.

    Note particularly the hands and feet

    (Poor photographer – he must have spent hours on that pose)

    (our mascot was the Roughneck)

    I am the one on the far left with fist pumped

    (one of the original fist pumpers)

    Senior prom

    (different boyfriend, Kerry, who gave a huge corsage)

    my mother rolled my hair until I left for college

    Note black and white striped shirt – 

    I was calling a junior high basketball game. 

    Yes, that’s right.  A teenager in public with my hair rolled.

    Mom made it a condition of my going to the gym.

     

    Senior Follies – and they were

    I sang an unremarkable rendition of the St. Louis Blues,

    but the bright yellow fringe dress was memorable.

    my lifelong love of tennis began here…

    on real tennis courts. Hard cement. 

    But I saw myself playing at Wimbledon.

    …and basketball, too

    as Coach Knipling used to say about my game,

    Sheila is short and slow, but she can shoot a free throw

    and of course, the political

    deals were struck between me

    and my good friend Leon

    who made an awesome VP

    The photos today are courtesy of me with my cell phone and my yearbook so quality leaves much to be desired, but you get the general idea of this 18-year-old baby dyke trying her best to be straight but  unknowingly about to add complexity to her sexual awareness through life in a women’s dormitory at the state’s largest university where the population of the dorm was greater than the population of the town where she grew up. Talk about trouble.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • in case you missed these amazing Olympians

    in case you missed these amazing Olympians


    (from Forbes Business online August 05, 2021)

    “There Are More Openly LGBTQ+ Olympians At Tokyo 2020 Than All Other Games Combined…

    BIG NUMBER: 182. That’s at least how many openly LGBTQ+ athletes there are competing at the Tokyo 2020 Games, according to Outsports. In Rio, there were 56. In London, 23.”

     

    Openly gay Raven Saunders of Charleston, South Carolina celebrates after winning Silver Medal in shot put competition. (Reuters, Dylan Martinez photo)

    This afternoon Raven returns home to Charleston but will not be greeted by her number one fan and sacrificing supporter, her mother, who died on August 03rd. in Orlando, Florida where she and Raven’s younger sister Tanzania were attending a watch party for Athletes of Team USA. For Raven the loss of her mother is one that causes her “heart and soul to cry out” as she posted on social media earlier this week. Any daughter, LGBTQ+ or straight, can understand the pain we feel when the woman who gave us life is no longer with us. Pretty and I send prayers for comfort to the family of Clarissa Saunders during these difficult days.

    Our family also extends our gratitude to Raven Saunders and the remainder of the out LGBTQ+ athletes competing in the Tokyo Olympics. Whether you won a medal in your sport or didn’t, you are all winners to us every time you have the courage to proudly proclaim who you are in your own back yard or on an international Olympic stage.

    Onward.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • Unrelated: Olympics and Bee Stings

    Unrelated: Olympics and Bee Stings


    Haiku #1

    The final athletes

    Stand on podium, tears flow

    As they hear anthem.

    The Haiku is a Japanese poetic form dating back to the 17th. century; as we near the end of the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo, and since I can’t speak Japanese, the least I can do is attempt their artistic expressions. The Haiku structure is for three lines: five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables again in the third line. There’s probably much more to think about, but I’ll leave it to that with my apologies to the true Haiku poets.

    Haiku #2

    The athletes go home

    to face practice, to wait for

    twenty twenty-four.

    Finally, the Haiku is supposed to be written for what is going on today. In addition to the close of the Olympics, Pretty and I had a frightening day with our granddaughter. We had a picnic with Pretty’s father at a park near her Little Mountain antique mall. Papa had brought a box of mountain tomatoes which we consider a delicacy. Although rain was not in the morning forecast, the grey clouds mixed with precipitation began on our drive up the road with intermittent downpours.

    Our granddaughter Ella wasn’t bothered by the rain. We ate lunch at a covered picnic table in the park. While the adults visited, Ella was busy, going thither and yon with the fervor of a twenty-two month old child determined to explore.

    Skies cleared just long enough for group swings, as in Ella was in a playground swing with no basket, Pretty pushed her in the swing while Papa and I circled the wagons around them to prevent any unexpected dismount.

    A good time was had by all for more than hour when Papa had to leave for his home in the upstate, but Ella was not ready to go home yet. She walked a short distance to the baseball field where she had walked around a few minutes before with Papa and Pretty.

    Unfortunately for our little girl, she wandered into a dugout that had a nest of angry flying insects. She started wailing as they stung her repeatedly which caused Pretty to spring into high gear and run as fast as she could to rescue Ella. I watched in horror as Pretty shouted It’s bees. And I just got stung twice, too.

    OMG, I thought and from the look on Papa’s face, I knew he felt the same. Y’all go on, he said. I’ll clear the table.

    We took off to look for a doctor but had no luck until seeing a CVS Minute Clinic after what seemed to me to be an eternity of driving. Rural medicine in full display. Pretty raced in to the CVS but returned with the news that the pharmacists were afraid to prescribe Benadryl for a child younger than four. Our heroine Pretty did purchase Children’s Tylenol which Ella’s mother made sure we administered when she talked to Pretty on the phone. Ella slept the next half hour as Pretty drove me home.

    Haiku #3

    Cries of pain linger

    from stings of mad hornets. Too

    young to understand.

    So here’s to the weekend – good luck to the Olympians who will be putting the final touches on the games for everyone to enjoy, to the winners who will celebrate on the journey home and to those others who won’t have medals to angst over as they make the flights to their families and friends. Oh no. Both winners and losers will angst over whether those planned flights will fly.

    And here’s to our brave granddaughter who scoffs at not only the regular bumps and bruises but also the stings of a heretofore unknown enemy.

    A special “here’s to” for Pretty who was wounded as she defended our Ella in the midst of a crisis. She moved swiftly to save the day.

    At this time Ella is at home with a peace offering of vanilla ice cream. I have now reached the altered state I need to take a nap.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • going for gold in an inferno of sand in Tokyo while America burns and Europe floods


    Pretty follows the Olympics as faithfully as I do the tennis majors; therefore, I also follow the Olympics which apparently are being carried on at least a gazillion channels in U-verse land without an adequate GPS to locate your destination. Thank goodness we finished our Downton Abbey re-runs just in the nick of time before the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Torch was lit or we might be waiting breathlessly to meet Lady Mary’s final husband.

    And yet, here we are in 2021 with our 2020 Olympics. Nothing’s perfect.

    Unfortunately, the first event I watched was women’s beach volleyball. Word to the designer of “uniforms” in this event: shame on you. Good grief. These athletes wore bikinis which left nothing to the imagination while they (barefooted) served, set and spiked a multicolored ball on a court made of sand with temperatures of up to 113 degrees, according to the commentator during the game. Now I’m thinking that’s wrong on so many levels. But let’s start with if female athletes must wear outfits reminiscent of the Emperor Who Wears No Clothes to attract fans while they run around on sand that burns their feet, then maybe it’s time to re-think beach volleyball as an Olympic sport.

    Speaking of burning sand, the Tokyo heat is mild compared to the fires in the western states of the USA on the North American continent. Nero was spotted tuning his fiddle as firefighters waged their war against the Bootleg fire in Oregon – the largest of 88 large wildfires currently burning in the U.S. – CBS News reported today. Nearly 1.5 million acres have been scorched during this season. New fires ignite due to the drought conditions and heat waves brought about by guess what? Bazinga if you said climate change.

    As drought and unprecedented heat waves spark the loss of lives, homes and complacency in the American west, the floods across the proverbial pond on the European continent cause equal devastation of losses never to be recovered in central European countries like Germany and Belgium. The culprit: evil dastardly climate change which seems much more than imaginary to the families who have lost loved ones in addition to their hopes for the future.

    Lordy, Lordy – there’s tropical storms (think big wind and lots of rain) swirling near Japan with a Covid pandemic swirling inside the Olympic Village. So far 14 athletes have tested positive according to the official games stats released yesterday.

    Somebody STOP me – the weight of disasters is heavier than my weighted blanket which I still use in the summer time when the living is clearly not easy. We send our love to all our followers in cyberspace who are struggling for whatever personal disaster has struck. From our family to yours, we are with you. We wish we could lessen your burdens…until then…

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • from black magic vaccines to Wimbledon wizardry

    from black magic vaccines to Wimbledon wizardry


    Pretty knows I will be grumpy next week because today the two week tennis odyssey known as Wimbledon climaxed with the men’s championship match which pitted 25 year old Italian Matteo Berrettini in his first career slam final against five time Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic of Serbia. The not unexpected result was a sixth Wimbledon title for Djokovic, but Berrettini tested the champ with his massive serve and forehand that Djokovic called “the hammer” in his post match interview on court.

    Novak also played for his place in history today – his victory gave him a total of 20 grand slam titles that tied the record for men on the tour with Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal. At 34 years of age, Djokovic is the youngest of the three (Nadal is 35, Federer will be 40 in August) and thought to be a favorite for a gold medal in the Olympics this summer as well as the front runner in the US Open in New York which begins August 30th. He is now also leading the conversation for the GOAT of men’s tennis; his four set win on the Wimbledon grass courts today support the acclaim.

    If anyone is looking for a tennis band wagon to climb on for a ride to the top, Djokovic is your man. Those of us who are Nadal and Federer fans for the past 20 years find Novak’s band wagon a tough one to climb on, but it’s hard to argue with his professionalism, his commitment to the game, and most of all…his success. Well done.

    The Wimbledon women’s championship was played yesterday with two newcomers to the final: Ash Barty of Australia, Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic. Barty won a thrilling 3 set match which began with a frozen Pliskova who lost her first four games on Centre Court but she thawed in the second set to push Barty, the number 1 player in the world, to a third set. Wow. Big hitting, Vanna. Pow – take this. Pow – you take that.

    The unusually emotional Barty paid tribute to fellow Indigenous Australian Evonne Goolagong Cawley who won her first Wimbledon singles title in 1971 fifty years ago. Barty not only made Cawley proud but also the entire country of Australia which holds Ash as a special part of its large tennis heart that is sprinkled with awesome champions in the past. I’ve just about given up on tears, but mine flowed alongside Barty’s during her interview after the match. You see, I remember when Evonne Goolagong won Wimbledon so Barty’s respect for her mentor and friend made me feel the emotions I always felt when Dick Enberg wrapped up NBC’s Wimbledon coverage every year. Enberg was a man who tapped the spirit of sports – and the tennis tradition that was Wimbledon.

    My love for this game runs deep, and one of the ways I mark time is by the tennis season majors. The Australian Open, Roland Garros and now Wimbledon are in my 2021 rear view mirror. The Olympics are an added attraction this year but I know the year is drawing to a close when the US Open ends in September. Remarkable how time slips away.

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    On a totally different subject I had a remarkable conversation this week with someone who told me he hadn’t been vaccinated against the Covid virus. We live in South Carolina which currently ranks 39th. in the nation out of 50 states with our 39% of the population fully vaccinated so I wasn’t surprised to talk to someone who was in the majority. But his objections to the vaccine included his opinion it had not been fully tested plus his belief in a mysterious component lurking in the vaccine which was designed for “culling” the population. I shook my head and asked him who he thought was being “culled?” Hearing this fiction on the news made the ideas seem distant, unrelated to my life. Having the black magic plots brought to me at my back door steps by someone I knew personally – someone whose work I admired – chilled me in the hot summer humidity.

    As John McEnroe would say, You cannot be serious?

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.