In 8th grade, I couldn't stand DVJS. This was entirely due to the fact that we attended different middle schools, and thus, played against each other in sports. Everything boiled down to the B team basketball championship game that year. After an undefeated 7th grade year, my South Spartans had scuffled a bit trying to defend the title, and the upstart Schroeder Raiders were poised to seize the trophy.
There had been a fair amount of trash talk during the game-- though I can't recall what, exactly, 8th grade trash talk sounded like. "You only have like seven armpit hairs!"...."No, YOU only have like seven armpit hairs!" Schroeder eventually pulled away and blew it open towards the end, and the starters, including myself, were pulled. (Duh, I was a starter. No, I couldn't make the A team, but I was a threat at any time to put up a triple double on the B team. Not necessarily double digits in points, rebounds, and assists....more like points, times adjusting my glasses, and times I glanced into the crowd to see if my crush Jamie was watching me.)
While Easy E, T. Nels, and the rest of us sat on the bench and continued to fume and yell shit at the Schroeder guys, DVJS went to the line for a couple of free throws. During the second one, he looked over at our bench, closed his eyes, and calmly swished the free throw. This wasn't a good-natured situation, like the Michael Jordan/Dikembe Mutombo eyes-closed free throw. This was a giant middle finger to all of us sitting on the bench. From that moment on, his name was poison. A mild dislike became an intense hatred, until roughly a year later. After we ended up at the same high school, the South/Schroeder rivalry melted away, and as our friend groups slowly meshed, we found we had a lot of stuff in common-- basketball, video games, professional wrestling, etc. Soon, he was one of my closest friends.
Fast forward to today. We both moved to Lawrence, Kansas at the same time, and still play City League basketball together (16 years as teammates now, and Stockton and Malone did 18. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.) He's still one of my closest friends. I watched him get married to a wonderful gal (who makes wonderful NBA Draft cupcakes) last weekend, and while watching the ceremony, I chuckled to myself. If you would've told me 17 years ago that I'd be this close of friends with DVJS, I could never have imagined it. But if you were to tell me today to imagine the last 17 years without him, I don't think I could imagine that either.
The moral of the story: If somebody makes an eyes-closed free throw against you during a blowout championship game victory, don't immediately write that person off as a bad human being. There's a thin line between love and hate.
Congrats DVJS and Hannah, and shout-out to Wads, Ron, Nick, Liza, Maxi, etc., etc. Great to see all of you after so many years.
