and, on a personal note...
3 or 4 months into hs frosh times, mostly my hands started to have 'skin inflammation.' like, 'hey cliff, why u hands be bleedin? stop getting it on the ball!' we played a lot of outdoor hoops.
pops sez 'we got to have that checked.' he takes me to an ancient skindoc pal of his, and the guy does an examination mostly centered on questions.
afterward, sitting the waiting room with pops, doc comes out and says to pops, 'ok, come on in cliffpop, i have some thoughts.' pops be like 'it's aboot him, not me, so we'll come in together.' okeydoke says doc.
'it seems like cliff has a lot of change going on in his life right now, so im thinking that stress is causing this.' pops looks at me and sez ' really? what's bugging you? everything seems pretty normal to me in ur life. what do you think aboot this?'
me? 'i dunno, i got no complaints, except for this hand thing. it's messing up my shot and handle...'
doc recites an obvious littany of new things happening to me (new school, etc), looks at me and says 'what do you think?'
'could be. it's true that, all of a sudden, there is a lot going on for me. you may be right.' he gave me a topical cortosteroid balm, and said 'come back in a month or so.'
forewarned is forearmed, and a few weeks later it all disappeared. permanently.
Slow down
You move too fast
You gotta make
The morning last, just
Kickin' down
The cobble stones
Looking for fun
And feeling groovy.
i asked pops 'since this is all some kind of stress thing, and brilliant medical inquiry has determined that school might be one of the triggers, shouldn't i get carte blanche to decide what days i feel like going to school?'
he said 'no,' and then prolly sumthin like 'and when we get home, don't forget to take out the trash cans, rake the leaves, go to the store for ur moms, wash the car, walk the dog, then go to the un and straighten that mess out...'
everrthing cuttin into my hoops time.
now, that's stress.