The Real Score Eludes the Young

The Boston Herald

I didn't watch the Super Bowl so I didn't see the ads then. But on Monday morning there they were, on AOL, just a click away. That's how I happened upon Michael Jordan. He was on the screen, the man he is now, playing hoops - through the magic of technology - with his younger self. Michael Jordan the man and Michael Jordan the boy together in a pitch for Gatorade.

It was incredible footage. But 30 seconds and it was over.

Except that Michael Jordan the man had been Michael Jordan the boy. And he knew him, every inch of him. And he loved him. The camera caught this.

It caught, too that the boy did not know the man. The boy Michael was like every one of us when we were young - confident that we would be young and on top of our game forever.

An old man sitting on a porch would recognize his younger self walking by. He would see a child in short pants and even from a distance know he was that boy. He would watch a gawky 14-year-old and say, "That's me." He would recognize himself at every age, despite the changes that time metes out.

But a child sitting on that same porch looking into the future? He would see all the same things, but he would never recognize himself even if someone said, "See that young man in a suit? See that old guy with a beard? That's you." Boys and girls and young men and young women think, "I'm never going to get old."

And then when it happens? We make jokes about it. When did I become my mother? Who is that bald man in the mirror? Who is this person whose hands I don't recognize, who walks down the stairs instead of running?

If the girl I was could see me now, what would she say? 

"Why don't you play Jacks anymore? Why do you read the news and not the comics? And what are you doing listening to talk radio? When did you get so serious?”

I feed the birds every day. I have feeders and I buy special seed and I have binoculars next to the window and if anyone had told me when I was 12 or 20 or 40 that I would be doing this, I'd have said, "Not me.” I go for walks just to walk. I wear comfortable shoes and a hat that my younger self wouldn't have been caught dead in.

It's possible to look back. It's called remembering and we do it all the time. But it's impossible to see ahead. 

On Sunday, a young golden retriever followed my friend Beth and me on our walk. He barreled out of his yard and ran ahead of us the whole way. He ran up to other dogs behind chain fences and then he ran back to us. He ran in circles. He leaped. He bounded for more than two miles. He never stopped.

And I thought about how my dog Molly used to run like this. And how she doesn't anymore. And how, when she was a puppy, there was an old dog in the neighborhood that couldn't run, that lumbered. And how I believed that my dog would run forever. 

On Saturdays, Janet Butler and I played marbles in her driveway. Then we watched "Fury." On summer nights we sat on my front steps. "When we grow up," we said. But it was always about getting there, never about being there.

Now here we are today. It's Janet's birthday. She's 56 and I will soon follow. And the one thing I know for certain is what I saw in a 30-second ad: that the two young girls on my front steps wouldn't recognize us as them no matter how many times we walked by.

But we will always know and love them. That's how it is. And that's what a camera caught, a tenderness more powerful than time.