The Day I WAS Michael Jordan

Jan 24, 2025

Hola, amigos,

Sorry, mea culpa - I haven’t posted here in a while, having switched my regular newsletter (that’s what Substack calls these posts) - to my “Santa Fe Substack”. There I publish every two weeks (except when I publish here), and between the two “stacks”, I haven’t missed a two-week newsletter deadline since I originally Substacked on the first day of Spring, almost three years ago, March 21, 2022.

Thank you for being my Readers and Subscribers.

By the time you’re reading this post, I’ll have been in Portugal for just over a week. Not wanting to miss a deadline, after just bragging about never having missed one, I’ve written this the day before I leave to Lisbon from Santa Fe (actually Albuquerque, the nearest “grown-up” airport in New Mexico). Here’s an amusing, pre-trip post on Santa Fe Substack about how not to prepare for a trip.

But THIS POST is not about my trip to Portugal, as I haven’t been there yet, but it is about the day I “beat” Michael Jordan. Yes, the world-famous one. The basketball ball player.

Ok, I didn’t beat him in a basketball game. Nor did my team beat his team.

But, even better,

for one day in my life, I was Michael Jordan.

True.

Ok, now you’re probably being too rational. How can a man (Trules), from an originally Ukranian, then New York-Jewish middle-class family, think he actually was a poor North Carolinian black man, whose family most probably derived from Africa and American slavery? And furthermore, one who actually was the best basketball player the history of the game?

You probably think I’m going to tell you about a hallucinogenic drug trip from back in the day, right? LSD? Psilocybin mushrooms?

Wellll… I could do that, but… that wouldn’t be about the day I was Michael Jordan.

Because that day occurred in the summer of 1960. Technically, about two and a half years before MJ, the basketball God in question, was born on February 17, 1963, in Cumberland Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, but who then moved, at five years old, to Wilmington, North Carolina, where was raised, play hoops, and ultimately became a state legend.

See, I did “beat him”. At least chronologically.

But again, not the point, dear readers.

Thanks for reading Trules Rules! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I was 13 years old in 1960, on summer break from 7th grade at W. Tresper Clarke High School in Westbury, New York. I was soon to enter the 8th grade. I had never spent a night outside my own house.

Now… it’s hard to admit… that I just might have been a… “mama’s boy”, or even a “daddy’s boy”, raised, as I was, on privileged suburban Long Island. But apparently… and of course, I don’t remember when I was but more than an infant, but apparently… I suffered from something now called “separation anxiety”.

I know, believe me, that’s for young pups and neurotic grown-ass dogs, not for a two-year-old infant, yours Trulesly, who apparently… when left by Mama Trules in a shopping cart at the local A&P, while she went around the corner to the frozen food aisle… it seems, apparently… that little Baby Trules… climbed out of said cart, and in abandoned-infant desperation, not seeing his ever-present, doting mother, apparently… I’m told… proceeded to bang his/my hard head on the linoleum-covered concrete floor…. until a gaggle of incensed female suburban grocery store shoppers… picked the howling infant up, me, and started screaming for his/my absent Mother.

Oh, what a day! When… Trules… first earned - his infamous and stubborn moniker - “The Hardest Head in Hollywood”.

Ok, it’s the summer of 1960. Ma and Pa Trules, my parents, have decided that it’s a “good idea” to send their eldest, first-born, one and only, son, Eric/me (about 50 years before I started going by my last name only) - to summer camp.

It’ll be good for you. You’ll become more independent. You may even like it.

Thanks for that last, Mom and Dad, “I may even like it.”

You see, it was the thing to do in suburban New York back in the 50s and 60s - to send your kids to “sleep-away” camp.

This may, or may not, take place after you’d been to “day camp”, where the parents put you on a yellow school, but now yellow camp, bus and got rid of you for the hot days of summer. Me? I never went to “day camp”.

But nowwww…I’m being shipped off to “sleep-away camp”.

I protest.

I don’t want to go. Why do I have to go?

Never, definitively,

I’m not going!

I was still the always-parent-pleasing “good boy” in those days.

And so off I go.

Things do not go well.

After the very first day, I’m…homesick.

Who are all these kids from Philadelphia and Perth Amboy, New Jersey who I don’t know? I don’t like any of them.

I’m in “Tunk 7”, where the oldest “boys” in camp are. Brassy “Stanley”, “Big Lon”, cool “Duvvy”, and about six others who all sleep on my side of the tunk, Oh, and nerdy “Henry” too. All these guys have been to “Camp Lindenmere” before, high in the Pocono Mountains in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Many have been here for continuous summers ever since elementary school. They all know each other.

Our counselor is “Herbie”, like my uncle’s name, but this dude is as skinny as Ichabod Crane, and he always seems to have a dark unshaven beard from which his white teeth sparkle.

Herbie, can I call my mother and father?
Not yet. You just got here. Give it a few days.

And after a week,

Herbie, can I call my Mom and Dad. It’s been more than a week. You said I could.
Oh, c’mon, guys don’t call their parents from summer camp. Just have a good time. Forget about them.

But… I couldn’t. I missed them. I missed my room with its hand-painted cowboy mural, my neighborhood junior high friends, my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I wanted out.

After three of four weeks, mid-way through the camp season (I can’t remember if I was away for six or eight weeks), things are no better. Herbie has sent me to talk to the Head Counselor, Fred, who has, no doubt, “seen it all”.

Apparently… he’d been in touch with my parents after a few worrisome Herbie reports, and they were coming up to see me on “Visiting Day”, along with the rest of the campers’ parents.

I tell myself,

Thank God, I’m going home! (I don’t believe in God.)
“Free, at last!”

Share Trules Rules

I’ll never forget that Visiting Day Sunday afternoon, walking around the entire camp grounds with Fred and my parents.

C’mon Eric, you don’t want to miss Color War, do you? That’s the best part of the summer.

That’s Fat Fred, naturally trying to encourage/force me to stay for the second half.

I just want to go home.
But Eric, son, you might have a wonderful time if you stay.

OMG! My mother is selling me out!

“Might!!! Again!

You said I could come home!
We said, “We can talk about it.” That’s my father, equally the duplicitous traitor.

Bottom line - I stay.

Cut to: “Camp Lindenmere, Part 2. Color War.”

I’m still unhappily holed up in Tunk 7, but the die has been cast. There’s no way I can get back to Westbury and the 8th grade until after this ordeal is over.

“Color War”? You know what that is?

It’s a competition, especially at sleepaway camps, between the entire camper population. Half the campers are “blue”, the other half are “white”. Blue competes against white, and vice versa, in every imaginable sport the camp can make up: swimming, softball, track, cheerleading, probably dining room behavior and teeth brushing, and definitely… basketball.

I used to be a pretty good athlete. Still am for my age. But back in the day, I played every sport we kids could find: football, baseball, hockey, tennis, ping pong, and yeah, of course, B-ball.

But I was also a terrible competitor. Whenever the pressure was high, I folded. Never could make the high school varsity teams because I was too scared to try out, or when I did, I sucked and played my worst. Since then, I’ve decided to - no longer compete. In tennis, post-college, I just smacked the ball, back and forth - without keeping score. I was a such a choker-sore loser, that I learned it was better for me to not compete.

But now, here’s Color War, 1960, Camp Lindenmere. Blue against White. White against Blue!

One basketball game only - for the most Color War points in the entire competition.

I’m on the White Team, and there’s… Billy Dubin… on The Blue.

Billy fucking Dubin, from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, the Michael Jordan of Camp Lindenmere.

Dubin, at a pimply 13, going on 18, at just over 6 feet, can run like a gazelle, slam tennis balls down your throat, and like his grand-nephew, Steph Curry, Dubin can shoot the lights out on a basketball court. “Best Shot in the Poconos”! (I’m not exactly sure about his future relationship to Mr. Curry.)

Me and the Whites don’t have a chance against Dubin. He can beat us all by himself.

The game begins.

Miraculously, it’s up and down through three quarters. I’m having the game of my life. Playing both point and shooting guard. (What’s the difference?) Everything I throw up - is going in.

Herbie, our coach, says,

Just keep shooting, Eric. Get the ball and shoot!

He can’t be talking to me, can he? I’ve never led a basketball team to a victory in my life. I’m usually “just a sub”.

But now, it’s the end of the 4th quarter. Dubin has just dunked the ball over the rest of us White midgets. Blue is up by one point. (It’s before the age of three-pointers).

Herbie shouts to me from the sideline,

Take the ball out and SHOOT!

It’s a full-court game. I take the ball out, pass to chunky Lon Lonker, who immediately passes it back to me.

I dribble, poorly, to half-court.

Herbie shouts to me in a bone-chilling panic,

SHOOOOOOT!

I heave the round-orange Wilson into the sky.

Time stops.

The ball launches into a cloud dance,

into a high desperate arc.

I don’t know where I am.

On another planet?

The ball starts to come down.

In slowwwww mo-tion.

It looks on target.

No, it’s a little off…..

SWISH!

BUZZER! (Maybe a cow bell!)

GAME OVER!

My teammates run at me like a multi-legged, White-shirt tornado.

They lift me on their shoulders.

Carry me off the court.

Dubin comes over and gives me a reluctant high five.

I scream,

We won! We won!

See! That’s ME! With the Camp Lindenmere 1960 Color War Championship Trophy!

Think what you want. But this is the Day that I AM Michael Jordan.

Look! The proof is right here in the photos.

Look, I’m even wearing a WHITE hat.

It’s a miracle. And… with one SWISH, the whole summer camp experience changes for me overnight. I’m not a wussy Mama’s or Daddy’s Boy; I’m a frigging Camp Lindenmere Color War hero!

And that’s the day I remember best. Out of all the days of my childhood.

A few years later, I’m not a child anymore. I’m an angry young member of the counterculture. Everything my parents want for me, I hate and reject. I don’t go to my own college graduation, and I take off from New York - for good.

But that ONE DAY, when I WAS Michael Jordan?

The day the ball went in and we won the game…

That’s the day when - I was still young, and America… was still great!

The Day I WAS Michael Jordan

Discussion about this post