"...if you're blessed with the talent utilize it to the fullest..."

This story begins half a lifetime ago.

It was early 1993, the spring semester of my freshman year at Paschal. I can't remember the day, but it was about 2:15 in the afternoon and school got out in five minutes. As usual Mr. C, my biology teacher, had stopped teaching about 15 minutes before the bell rang and was acting like he was going over some papers while most likely wishing that school would hurry up and get out so he could go home and settle down with a nice bottle of Southern Comfort. He wasn't paying attention to the students anyway so I decided that I would begin my departure from school a little bit early and I snuck out the door (remember when it was cool to do stuff like that? It's not like I could go anywhere. I was only 14 and was still going to have to wait for my dad to come pick me up). As I made my way down the hallway of the science hall, I saw a man at the end of the hall just staring at me intently as I walked. I immediately became wary. He looked vaguely familiar but that didn't mean anything. He could have been a pedophile looking to snatch a kid or a teacher about to reprimand me for cutting class; in my mind those were equally bad scenarios. When I got closer to him he started talking to me. He asked my name and age. Despite my reservations, my training as a young-Nigerian-speaking-to-an-elder kicked in and required that I answer him correctly. He finally introduced himself: he was Mr. A and he was the track coach at Paschal. He wanted me to come to practice the next day.

Sweet. Thus began my track and field career.

Track seemed ideal to me. I loved to run and thought that I was pretty fast. I envisioned myself as the next Carl Lewis, dusting suckas in the 100 meter dash. The problem was that Coach A's vision was different. He saw me as a middle distance runner (specifically, the 400 meters) and a hurdler (specifically, the 300). I wasn't too crazy about either one of those but I was willing to do what it took to be on the track team. The 400 wasn't that bad. At least the first 300 meters of the race wasn't. Coming down that last straightaway however, really separated the men from the boys. At that point you are no longer running on talent but running on will. I still remember some of my teammates laughing the first time I ran it competitively. As we came around the corner the leaders began to distance themselves from the rest of the pack. I felt like I was about to collapse. But even though I knew I wasn't going to win, I dang sure wasn't going to be one of the last ones. So I grit my teeth, threw my head in the air and willed myself to run faster. Apparently it was a pretty amusing sight. I never ran the 300 hurdles at a meet. One day in practice I was running some drills over the hurdles. I was beginning to feel like I was getting the hang of it. But then at one point my tail leg got caught on one of the hurdles, I hit the grown HARD and rolled into the next hurdle. Back then D-Wade wasn't around to encourage us by espousing mathematical impossibilities. So as I lay there, the pain enveloping my entire body, I made the decision that I was never going to run hurdles again. And I never did.

One event that Coach and I did agree on was the 4x100 meter relay. My best memories of track come from this. I was pretty much the only sprinter at Paschal who wasn't also on the football team but one thing we could all agree on was that the sprint relay was the most exciting sporting event that you could be a part of. There is no feeling like it; the adrenaline rush is crazy. I wasn't one of the four main runners, but since I was equally not terrible on the curve or the straightaway Coach made me the alternate and from time to time he would allow me to run either third or fourth leg. I had always thought that you would want your fastest sprinter to run anchor but Coach's philosophy was to get the lead early and make the last two runners hold on to that lead. So he gave the responsibility of second leg to his fastest runner. And in our case that job went to Stanley J.

Stanley J was a year older than me and I can say, without any hyperbole, that to this day he remains the most talented athlete that I have ever met in my life. During his junior and senior years in high school, he was at least All District as a wide receiver in football, a point guard in basketball and a sprinter in track. He STILL holds the Texas 5A record for most receiving yards in a game (356, which is second all time for ALL Texas high schools of any level; technically the state record is 357 yards but it belongs to someone who played 6-man football so it shouldn't really count). It wouldn't have surprised anyone at Paschal if Stanley had gone on to become a professional athlete in some sport. Except for one thing: Stanley was 5'5". Because of this it didn't matter how many accolades he received or how many records he held. It didn't matter that he could run the 40 in under 4.3 seconds or could dunk a basketball with two hands. Due to his height no Division 1A school was willing to give him a chance. He eventually signed with an in-state Division II school to play football. The last time I heard from him was when he stopped by at Paschal during my senior year to tell us the hazing rituals that freshman football players went through.

Meanwhile, I continued to participate in track and field. I had finally discovered an event where I excelled: the long jump. Well, "excel" may be a tad bit strong, but I was the best (meaning "only") long jumper on the squad. I did have a problem though. See, Coach A basically showed me how to do the long jump but after that he never actually coached me on it. I was basically out there figuring it out on my own. That led to me being wildly inconsistent. The trick with the long jump is learning to make your stride the same every single time. That way, you can time your approach so that you plant your foot squarely on the white stripe. If your foot lands too soon then you're losing several inches or more on your jump. If it lands too late then the jump doesn't count. At virtually every meet where I was entered in the event, coaches from other schools would come up to me with some variation of, "Son, you're a great jumper but you have no technique. You've gotta learn to be consistent." I would try but I could never quite get it (I had a similar issue, and similar comments from coaches, about the high jump. I never learned to lift my hips to get the extra height that I needed). And Coach A was busy spending most of his time with the sprinters. Another problem that I had was the fact that I participated in track and field in the state of Texas, where there are great athletes everywhere. Specifically, I did so in Fort Worth, where track athletes seem to grow on trees. The national high school record for both the 4X100 (39.76 seconds) and 4x200 (1 minute, 23.31 seconds) are held by a group of guys from O.D. Wyatt who were sophomores when I was a senior (perhaps not so coincidently, the collegiate record for both of these events are held by two different teams from TCU...must be something in the water). My personal best in the long jump was 22 feet. Meanwhile, over at O.D. Wyatt, a guy I had gone to middle school with named Charles J with was routinely jumping over 23. That wasn't very encouraging.

Midway through my senior year I decided to quit track. Most of the friends that I had had on the team had either graduated or already quit for one reason or the other. I was the only senior on the team and most of the other people were middle or long distance runners. Since I knew we had no shot at winning district and no schools had contacted me about track scholarships I decided to focus on getting an academic scholarship.

Thus ended my track and field career.

Fast forward about three years. Now I'm a junior in college. All remnants of the track athlete are gone. I fit the stereotype of the backpacker to a T: baggy pants, oversize shirts, cap pulled down low over my eyes, large headphones permanently attached to my ears, constantly screaming about the sanctity of "the four elements." It was around this time that I met a freshman by the name of Ian B. One day I was eating lunch by myself in the Penland cafeteria and this guy came over and sat across the table from me. He recognized me from church and introduced himself. Even though I wasn't the friendliest of people, I liked this kid; he seemed cool. We ended up doing a lot of stuff at church together, and at school we took a Hebrew class together and were part of the same ministry outreach team. I had actually known him for a while before I learned that he was actually a scholarship member of the track team, which was very impressive considering Baylor's prestige in the sport.

When I learned this, a lot of my memories of track and field came rushing back. From time to time I would ask Ian about the team and he was never too annoyed to talk about it. I remember finally asking him about something I was really curious to learn.

FEMI: How are the jumpers?
IAN: They're not bad.
FEMI: Do you know anything about the long jumpers?
IAN: Yeah, we only have one but he's actually pretty good.
FEMI: What does he jump?
IAN: About 22 feet, I think.

There's a lesson in here somewhere, I imagine...

Oh yeah, by the way...I'm 5'11.


TITLE TAKEN
Blackalicious (Gift of Gab); "Deception"