Senior Year

by Dan Shaughnessy

  The whole story of the New Year's Eve Bash has never been told. Personally, I don't want to know all of it. This much I know: in a moment of sheer insanity, Marilou and I decided it would be okay to make a trip to Nantucket to celebrate New Year's Eve in December 2003. At the time, Sarah was two years out of high school, Kate was a freshman at Boston University, and Sam was a sophomore at North. They were all still teenagers, well below drinking age, and there were approximately 2,000 friends of the Shaughnessy teens within a five-mile radius of our house for that holiday season. Given those facts, what responsible parent wouldn't take off for an overnight trip, leaving the house in the custody of three teen siblings?

  Like I said, I don't know all that happened, but I do know that when we got home the front door had a broken window and a chair on the porch was splintered. And despite cleanup efforts that no doubt took several hours and numerous trips to CVS for trash bags and air freshener, months later we still were finding plastic cups of beer and wine in the most bizarre places. It was like an archaeological dig of Newton's teen population. Anyway, the only good thing to come of all this was the admission that at some point during the festivities, young Sam used brute force to bounce a misbehaving former boyfriend. I didn't press for details. That was enough.

  Which gets us back to Sam and his nongirlfriends. Our favorite always has been tiny Teo, a cute girl who comes over to watch movies and episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Teo weighs 100 pounds and crawled into Kate's new suitcase just to show us that she could fit, or maybe to settle a bet. She was born in Bulgaria and gave us a Bulgarian goat bell for our front foyer door (anyone trying to sneak in or out after hours gets busted by the Bulgarian goat bell). Teo never seems to be able to finish a sandwich. One afternoon in our kitchen, I inhaled the last bite of her hamburger and she told me, "In Bulgaria, that means you now know all my secrets." I love to listen to her talk to her mom on her cell phone because she ducks out of the room holding the phone to her ear while speaking Bulgarian. I'm not sure if that means her mom doesn't speak English or she's just keeping secrets from us, but I always say, "You know, Teo, you really don't have to leave the room when you talk to your mom. You could be telling her that we're all fat and ugly and we'd never know."

  Kate thinks it's a good thing that Sam and Teo aren't doing the boyfriend-girlfriend thing. Kate's theory is that the high school romances never last, so it's better if Sam and Teo remain "just friends"; this will allow them to connect in a more meaningful way later. Me? I stay quiet about these things. I want to tell him that he'll never find anybody better than this girl, but who wants that kind of advice from their dad when they are 18?

  When I spoke to Sam on the phone from California, we both knew I wasn't going to be asking about any girls, but I did check in on the basketball situation. Tryouts were just over a week away. He'd have to decide by then.

  "Any more thoughts on basketball?" I asked.

  "I don't think so," he said. "We'll talk about it when you get home."

  I'm not into forcing a kid to do much of anything, unless it's related to health, SAT prep, or room cleaning, but I was getting close to making a stink about basketball. And I kept wondering why. Was it for him or for me? Always a disturbing question for any parent to ask himself.

  Bill Shaughnessy was a sophomore in the autumn of 1962 when Groton had a brand new high school and a brand new basketball coach. I'd seen the school rise from dirt—it was adjacent to the dusty recess yard of our elementary school. My sister Joan had been president of student council and was allowed to stick a shovel in the earth when they broke ground. The new school was pretty impressive, with chemistry labs and a big stage at one end of the cafeteria, but all I knew was that it had the shiniest hardwood basketball court I'd ever seen. Our house was only a short walk from school, and the way my bed was positioned, I could actually see the gym lights at night when my head hit the pillow.

  The new coach was a 22-year-old man named John P. Fahey. He was also my gym teacher. He yelled a lot and made us do calisthenics and all the stuff required by President Kennedy's newly created Council on Physical Fitness. You could tell that the big kids believed in this new young guy. Mr. Fahey got the basketball players' attention by cutting a bunch of senior lettermen on the first day of practice. The team had been 0-14 the year before he arrived, and the new coach saw no future in a bunch of senior losers who'd been junior losers and showed up complacent and confident in their senior status. I'm told there was a small outcry by some of the boys' parents (nothing like the town meeting scene in Hoosiers when the locals want to get rid of Gene Hack-man, but impressive by Groton standards), but it turned out that young Mr. Fahey knew what he was doing. In Fahey's second season, the Groton High Crusaders went 20-0 and won the league championship.

  Riding the officials, carrying a towel throughout the game, young Jack Fahey became something of a Groton celebrity. All the dads and other townsfolk admired what he was doing with the boys, and conversations about last night's game were carried on at the counter of Dixon's Drugstore and Bruce's Pharmacy throughout the winter months. All I knew was that I wanted to play for him when I got to high school. In the meantime, Mr. Fahey let me serve as ballboy and ride the bus to road games on Friday nights. Tuesday game nights were deemed too late for me.

  I was not a confident young man when I entered high school in 1967. I was still only five foot two and clearly wasn't going to carry on the legacy of brother Bill. In a way it was almost better that I was small and only marginally good at baseball and basketball. It was pretty easy for everyone seeing me to figure out right away that Dan Shaughnessy wasn't going to be another Bill Shaughnessy. It sort of took the pressure off.

  But I still wanted to be on the team. One of the great days of my life came in December of my sophomore year when Billy Hamilton came into study hall and said they'd posted the varsity roster in the boy's locker room. I ran downstairs and saw my name on the sheet tacked to the corkboard. I was Mr. Fahey's twelfth man. Thirty-seven years later, I went to a theater in Boston, watched Billy Crystal's magical 700 Sundays, and almost wept when he got to the part about his high school basketball coach keeping him on the team even though he wasn't very big or very good. The famous actor recalled, "It's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."

  Sitting in the Opera House, I took out my notebook and wrote that down. And now I'm writing it again. And I realize that Sam has none of this feeling. He's had good coaches in his eleven years of basketball, and he's played with kids far more talented than Bill Shaughnessy. He's got classmates walking around wearing basketball jackets that say "Massachusetts State Champions," kids who are going to play big-time college ball. But so much is different since the days when a high school basketball team could galvanize an entire town. How could Sam know that making the varsity basketball team could change somebody's life?

  It changed mine. A few months after riding the pine for the first-place 1968–69 Crusaders, I decided to run for class president. And I won. A year later, I won again. I started asking girls out on dates and sometimes they'd say yes (movies or bowling—that was it—and there were no "benefits," trust me). Making the team gave me identity and confidence. I think it even somehow made me taller. And John P. Fahey has been part of my life ever since. He was a pallbearer when my father died in 1979, and he was with me in the early innings of that cold May day when Sam hit the walkoff against Braintree.

  So the answer was yes. I was projecting myself, my story, on Sam's basketball decision. Tryouts weren't scheduled until the Monday after Thanksgiving, so we dropped the topic for a while. Basketball was the sport that must not be named.

  Thanksgiving morning featured the 111th playing of the annual turkey day football game between Newton and Brookline. Brookline is perhaps best known as the birthplace of John. F. Kennedy. Like Newton, it's full of college graduates, authors, Volvos, and flaming liberals. It's the People's Republic of Brookline. Brookline High School alums include Mike Wallace, Michael Dukakis, Patriot owne
r Robert Kraft, and Theo Epstein. Lately Newton's been having its way with the Warriors, but going into Thanksgiving 2005 the series was deadlocked, 52-52-6. Still, it did not figure to be a rough game for Newton. Our team was 8-2, bound for the playoffs, while Brookline staggered into late November with an 0-10 record.

  High school football on Thanksgiving is a Massachusetts tradition, and it was only recently that I learned it's not part of the high school experience in most states of the Union. Scholastic playoff games in Texas draw 40,000 fans. In the Commonwealth, we watch our boys get together at 10 A.M., while twenty-five-pound turkeys are roasting in ovens across the state. The annual Thanksgiving game offers college freshmen the first opportunity to see the kids they went to school with for twelve years. They're easy to spot. They gather at one end of the field, wearing their new school colors, exchanging stories about freshman year, and paying absolutely no attention to the twenty-two boys smashing helmets on the field. When the clock runs out, there is an onslaught of hugs and phony promises of hanging out over the short break.

  Newton beat Brookline on Thanksgiving 39–0. Another good day for the class of '06.

  During the holiday weekend, Sam asked his mom if our neighbor, Joe Inskeep, a Buddhist minister, would mind talking to him about Buddhism. Marilou was thrilled. I was apprehensive. We knew that Joe would be only too happy to instruct Sam on the mysteries of another religion, and it was somewhat remarkable that Sam (born the same day as Gandhi, whatever that's worth) was interested in anything other than baseball bats.

  I grew up in a strict Catholic household. My parents took us to church every Sunday and Mom sprinkled holy water on our heads any time there was threat of a thunderstorm. My sister Ann was not allowed to attend a baby shower for a classmate who got pregnant in high school. Sins were not to be celebrated and Catholic dogma was not to be challenged. The priest was always right. At the age of 10, I was brought to the local convent (Sisters of the Sacred Heart) and my parents told the nuns, "Danny wants to be an altar boy." I don't remember having any say in the matter. Next thing I knew, I was learning the Latin responses that needed to be recited from the altar. It turned out I was one of the last kids in America to undergo such instruction. About a half hour after I learned the Latin Mass, American Catholics switched to English. My dad, who went to Catholic schools his entire life and counted the collection money on Sundays, was dismayed. I was delighted.

  I served Mass every week until my sophomore year of high school. Lent was our playoff season, and Holy Week was the Series. During Communion, I was assigned to hold the golden plate under the chins of all the communicants. The plate assured that all potential host dust would be captured when the priest made the transfer from chalice to the mouths of our parishioners. And in the event of a dropped host, I'd be there to catch the body and blood of Christ—like a net under a trapeze act. One day, while I was simultaneously holding the plate, counting the house, and looking around for high school cuties, Father Carroll actually dropped the host while he was making the transfer...and I did not catch it with my plate!

  Unbelievable. Five years of standing at the altar like a doofus, holding the stupid plate in case of an error, and the one time the priest dropped the host, I failed to make the catch. In 1966, a host on the carpet was no laughing matter. Father Carroll secured the area, making everyone stand back while he went to his knees to retrieve the Holy Eucharist. He couldn't have embarrassed me more if he'd cordoned off the area with police tape.

  I never gulped the altar wine. It smelled like vinegar. As for unwanted sexual advances by priests, there were none. Maybe I was too naive to know, but none of the holy men ever hit on me. Not even later in my four years at Holy Cross. For the most part, priests were some of the finest men I knew.

  My dad certainly felt that way, and he'd have popped a blood vessel if one of his kids ever wanted to explore Buddhism. We weren't even allowed to go into Protestant churches in Groton. It was different for Sam. This was 2005, and we lived in Newton, where anything goes and independent thinking is celebrated. Marilou supplied Sam with a small library on Buddhism and he ploughed through the material as if it were a baseball bat catalogue. My son, the Buddhist.

  December

  The basketball dilemma went down to the wire, and now that it's over I can say I'm not proud of my part in the episode.

  While Sam was saying he did not want to go out for the team, I reminded him of the obvious advantages. He could be with his friends, working out every afternoon, and there would be a lot of sweet victories, maybe even a return trip to the Boston Garden. He'd invested eleven winters of his life playing hoops with the same guys who were now ranked number 47 in the country by Sports Illustrated. He'd gotten up early for the Saturday practices and learned how to play the game correctly. He knew how to pass, run the floor, box out, and defend.

  "I hate basketball," Sam would say at the end of these discussions.

  And then I'd go back and recite all the reasons he should play. Deep down, I knew I wanted to see him on that Boston Garden floor, if only for warm-ups. So I'd ask him if this wasn't some kind of defense mechanism. Was he afraid he'd be cut if he tried out? Was that it? The coach had told me a year earlier that he was counting on Sam to be one of his senior leaders, a presence at practice, and a good team guy. Sam had done the hard time of playing junior varsity as a junior. Why do that if not for a senior season on the bench with the state champs? It made no sense.

  "I hate basketball."

  I couldn't hear that because I remembered the best nights of my high school life, when the winter wind would whip around the steeples and silos and the high school gym was full of friends, neighbors, and sweet sweat. Parents and townsfolk gathered in the back row of the Groton High bleachers, and we felt like big men in our little town. When our games were over, we'd walk to our cars with our just-showered hair crystallizing into ice under an infinite black sky. Cheerleaders, still in their burgundy uniforms, would ride with us to the pizza place over in Ayer, and we'd tell basketball stories that we still sometimes recite: the now boring stories of glory days.

  Sam was allegedly still deliberating on the weekend before tryouts. In fact, he had already made up his mind but was still trying to figure out a way to appease his dad. He was also dealing with a parentally imposed deadline for his Boston College application. Frustrated by the normal procrastination of the 3-2 kid, Marilou threw up her hands and put me in charge. It was quite silly, really. Sam's BC application was a bag job—no different from that of any other recruited athlete who'd already been okayed by admissions. There was no suspense about it, none of the apprehension that was so much a part of the process for his older sisters. Still, Sam seemed to be having trouble finishing the job, which involved little more than postage. Ever the enabler, I dug into the bottom of my desk drawer and found a sleeve with some sheets of dusty Elvis stamps. They were made in 1993, when a stamp cost only 29 cents, and I'd given them to Sarah for her application to Harvard back in 2002. Who in admissions could resist checking out the application of any kid who applied under the cover of the King?

  Smiling at the sight of the old stamps, Sam slapped four of them on his BC application, and we got in the car to drive to the mailbox for the ceremonial drop. Mission accomplished, Sam got back behind the wheel and drove ... to the mall. He said nothing.

  This was a ride not unlike the one we made to Boston College back in October, when we didn't know whether he'd decided on BC or Notre Dame. This time, Sam led me into the Foot Locker at Watertown's Arsenal Mall.

  Still silent, he started trying on basketball shoes. He found a pair of size 13 Nikes that worked, and the salesman—wearing a referee shirt—went to ring up the purchase. I stopped Sam before we got the counter and said, "One last chance, big guy. I don't want you twenty years from now telling me that Dad made you play basketball against your wishes. We can stop now if you want. It's not too late."

  He just smiled and nodded and said, "I want to play."

  Ever
ything was different the next night when I got home from work and Sam was sitting at the island in our kitchen, eating a plate of meat, and shaking his head. He said he had no chance to make the team. "The coach hates me," he said. He said the coach had him working out with sophomores on the fifth string. Sam further endeared himself to the staff when one of his hard passes hit Anthony Gurley smack in the face.

  I said he needed to talk to the coach, one on one. He needed to ask, "What do I have to do to make this team?" He needed to find out if he had a fair shot. Give it a week, I told him. Don't let the guy make you quit.

  I had trouble sleeping that night. I kept rolling over, thinking about Sam and basketball. It reminded me of three years earlier when I tossed and turned while pondering Sarah's prospects for admission to the schools of her choice. It was the same when Kate was frustrated by her role on the volleyball team, fearful of the wrath of her coach. After about an hour of thrashing in the sheets, I wondered, What do people who don't have kids worry about at night? Why is this so important to me? Is Sam losing any sleep over this?

  My father never did this. You trying out for basketball? Good. See you in March when they hand out the letter sweaters—that is, if I'm not working that night.

  Larry Bird once told me a story about how little his dad cared about his high school basketball career. The gym wasn't far from the Bird household, but Bird senior wasn't always motivated to make the short walk. One night Larry's uncle had to call his dad at halftime to tell him to come down to the gym because his son was about to set some kind of scoring record. These were not camcorder parents.

  Why are we so much more involved with the ups and downs of our children's lives than our parents were? Is it because we have the time? Is it because we aren't worried about paying the fuel bill? We certainly don't love our kids any more than our parents loved us. Why were they able to let us figure it out for ourselves, when we are so intent on being involved every step of the way? Why are we such enablers and what kind of a dependent generation are we raising? It seems as if today's parents take on the roles traditionally assigned to grandparents—forget the tough love and just give the kid whatever he wants.