Magic Is Dead by Ian Frisch

Author:Ian Frisch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

15

Just a Simple Plan

Sports anchored my childhood. My father had always been a football fanatic, which was exacerbated by his time as a student at the University of Tennessee, a quintessential southern football school, during the years leading up to my birth. As I became older, however, secured by the goings-on of our small Massachusetts town, sports quickly built itself as a bridge between us. He coached my Pop Warner football team and eventually became president of the regional organization. We would drive to away games in his truck, me drinking chocolate milk and eating a cinnamon roll, him sipping coffee. He wore a navy-blue windbreaker with sunflower-yellow stripes, our team’s colors, and kept a laminated playbook jutting out of his back pocket. Although he continued to work long hours to expand his business, and to save money to build the big house in the woods, he still always made time to be involved with—and champion my participation in—sports-related hobbies. To him, it formed a camaraderie with my peers, taught the value of teamwork and leadership, and could instill in me the characteristics of becoming a well-rounded teenager and adult: things he wasn’t shown as a kid, but that he somehow knew to be important.

During this time, Shaquille O’Neal had become the nexus of children and sports. His boisterous personality and off-the-court endeavors appealed to young kids, and I was a poster boy of that influence. My father supported my fascination with Shaq. He played Shaq Fu, the video game, with me at night when he got home from work. He bought me Shaq’s rap albums, his Reebok shoes (no doubt way above budget for our family at the time), and, most important, the kid-sized jersey that I wore when we drove to Boston that brisk morning in March 1996. I was eight years old, at the height of my fandom. He had gotten an inside scoop as to where Shaq and the rest of the Orlando Magic, his team at the time, were staying for their away game against the Boston Celtics, and surprised me the morning of the game.

“You’re not going to school today,” he said, popping his head into my bedroom.

“Why not?” I asked.

He smiled. “The Magic are playing the Celtics today,” he said. “We’re going to go meet Shaq.”

I squealed in delight.

He was bringing me to meet my idol—the dream of any parent.

We parked across the street from the hotel’s entrance in downtown Boston. My father had no idea what time the team was scheduled to leave for the stadium, so we stood out in the sharp, late-winter wind and waited. I wore my Shaq jersey over a T-shirt and my father draped his big coat over my shoulders to keep me warm. It smelled like him: dust and tile mortar and cigarettes. After a few members of the local press showed up with their cameras, we knew the time was getting close.

My father tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a marker. “I think he’s coming,” he said.

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