ON THE REBOUND

My friend Jim Byrne used to work for Channel 56 in Boston, MA in the publicity and promotion department. Channel 56 was the home of the Boston Celtics basketball broadcasts and Jim invited me up to Boston to one of their parties for the television sponsors and clients of Channel 56 held at one of the local Boston hotels.

I came up to Boston from the Cape. I was wearing a sport coat, tie and wool dress pants. At the party there was an open bar, and a good assortment of shrimp and other quality appetizers. Quite a few of the former Celtic basketball greats were in attendance such as Bob Cousey, Tommy Heinsohn, Dennis Johnson and M.L. Carr. These former basketball stars were mingling and talking with the crowd as well as with each other.

In addition to the food and drink there was a regulation size basketball hoop set up with basketballs for everyone to "shoot some hoops". I shot a few baskets myself and then decided I would help out by rebounding and passing the balls out to the other guests so that they could have a chance to shoot some shots.

Things were proceeding with my rebounding until one fateful rebound. On this rebound I jumped up and landed on the ground with a wider stance than normal as if I was boxing out imaginary basketball players in a basketball game. As I landed I heard a rrrrriiippp noise and realized that I had split my wool pants along the bottom and back of the pants.

Luckily, my sport coat hid the "damage" to my pants. On the positive side of things; I was starting to get warm from rebounding and wearing wool pants so the tear in my pants provided a little "air conditioning".