From the Improvement Era, January 1969 –

Wow! Hands Bigger than Mine

By Elizabeth Dobson

It’s Saturday morning, and I am going down to the gym, as usual, to shoot baskets. I go at six a.m. to get in an hour’s worth before breakfast. The doctor says this constant practice will give me good coordination—and I need it, for I am six feet one inch tall and seventeen years old, and I am a girl.

I never date. I’m old enough and I want to, but I’m too tall for most boys, so I get up early every Saturday morning to shoot baskets.

It’s still dark, and it takes my eyes a moment to get used to the glare of the bright lights I have turned on in the gym.

The place is a mess. All about me are the lifeless mementos of the prom I was not asked to attend. As I stand in this vast echoing space, I can hear sounds I have never heard and see action I have never seen. The floor is slick with dance sand, but I wear tennis shoes. An empty cup sits on the free-throw line. I wish I had put it there. I wish I had been given it full with love, to drain in quiet togetherness with my date, while all about us couples moved in swirling happiness.

A piece of crepe paper catches my sweatshirt as I move toward the basket. I wish it had touched my shoulder last night. I wish it had tangled in my long hair and caught in my roses. I wish it had been lifted off and away by my tall date.

A door crashes; it must be the janitor. I pivot and shoot. I see the ball fading away through the tinsel and through the tears.

But it isn’t the janitor; it’s Jim. How do I know Jim? Well, he’s six feet three inches tall, the tallest boy in school and the star of the basketball team, and he is beautiful. I know, because I go to all the games with my dad.

I continue to shoot at my end, and Jim begins to practice at the other. He is doing fade-away jump shots, and I watch him out of the corner of my eye. I guess I watch him and not what I am doing, because my ball gets away from me and I have to chase it across the center line. I stop my ball, and as I begin to pick it up, I realize there are four hands lifting it instead of two. We hold the ball for a moment together; then he lets go and we stand apart.

“Good game last night,” I say. “You were hot.”

He lowers his head slightly, sort of self-consciously, and kicks a paper cup. “Well, yeah, I guess I was. We had to win it, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m Shirley, but my sarcastic friends call me ‘Shorty.'”

He laughs then, a beautiful, ringing, quiet laugh, as lie swings away and launches a one-hand set shot that swishes the net. We fool around a bit now at the same end of the gym, playing “horse” and a little one-on-one. He can run circles around me, but I know he is impressed all the same because I can keep up with him most of the time.

“Did you go to the prom last night after the game?” I ask him once when we are catching our breath.

“Naw, I never go to dances,” he says.

“Why not?”

“I never learned to dance— guess I was always too tall.”

“Say,” I ask, “why don’t you come over to the house with me now for breakfast? I make it myself, and there are plenty of eggs.”

Jim is quiet for a second; then he says softly, “Okay, I will. I’d like that.”

We run together and put the balls back in the office. We run, laughing, out the door into the bright new morning. I slip a little on the grass in front of the gym, and he catches me with an arm around my shoulder. What a beautiful thing! He didn’t have to reach up to my shoulder, but his arm went straight across. His arm slips down and we hold hands for a second. Wow, it’s great to touch a hand that is bigger than my own.

We break then and run on down the street. I live only three blocks from school, and we are there in a minute, because we race the last block, and I can almost keep up with him.

We stop for breath on our lawn. “Why didn’t you have breakfast this morning?” I ask.

“I left the house too early.”

“Why?”

Jim turns his blue eyes away for a minute as if there is something down the street he wants to see. Then he turns back and grabs my hand as he pulls me toward our front door. “I didn’t want to miss you, Shorty,” he says, as we go in to breakfast.