It’s March Madness once again, folks, and that means that both yesterday and today millions of men across the country are trying to wedge a few minutes of work into their busy days spent watching live streaming video of the opening round games of the NCAA Tournament. I am one of those men. Furthermore, I’m going to try and squeeze a blog post into that equation as well. I know, I know, I’m a true American hero. There is no need to thank me. The knowledge of a job well done is all I need to get by.

Actually, clicking on a few of those Google Ads at the bottom of the page would be great. Straight cash, homey, as my accountant always says.

Since I’m deep in the throes of March Madness (my doctor hasn’t gotten me that prescription for penicillin, yet, the bastard), it seemed appropriate to steer this week’s Growing Up Nate toward basketball.

In-between 8th and 9th grade, my school consolidated with one of our rivals down the road. We went from being Valley North HS, compromising the towns of Alvarado and Oslo to being Warren/Alvarado/Oslo HS.

When we made this consolidation, the head basketball coach for Warren HS, Gary Schuler, came to Valley North to meet with all of the underclassmen on the basketball team. Coach Schuler informed us of his off-season training incentives that he encouraged us all to participate in.

They were mostly honor-system type stuff, asking us to keep track of the hours we spent practicing our free throw shooting, our dribbling and our shooting. Depending on the amount of time that you’d spend on each discipline, you’d get a corresponding t-shirt as an award. For instance, if you shot 2500 free throws, you got a t-shirt saying that you shot 2500 free throws.Every kid walking around Warren that played basketball had one of these shirts on at least one day a week, so eager to ingratiate ourselves to our new head coach, we all attacked this opportunity with vigor.

Unlike most of my teammates, I lived in the middle of nowhere, ten miles from the nearest town and, more importantly at this juncture, ten miles from the nearest gym. Thankfully, my grandmother, who lived next door, had a paved driveway with an old basketball hoop. I knew I could spend all summer there, dribbling and shooting to my heart’s content. I also knew that I wasn’t that great of a basketball player, so I’d need to work harder and shoot more than everyone else to get better.

I’d have to shoot in the winter.  Outside. In the snow.

Most days, from December to April, I’d get home from school, bundle up, put on my basketball shoes and two pairs of shorts, grab my basketball and head over to my grandmother’s house.

Since it gets dark so early in the winter, I’d have to play under the glow of her security light, which was motion-activated. So, every 15 minutes, I’d have to jump around in front of the sensor to reactivate it.

After I’d get warmed up, I’d be able to shed at least a layer or two. It was all about staying active. Often, I’d glance over at her my grandma’s thermometer and notice that it was 15 or even 10 degrees, and I’d be wearing nothing but basketball shorts, a cap and a couple of sweatshirts. Somehow, I never got frostbitten and never contracted a cold. Of course, it’s hard to get a cold when your nasal passages are frozen shut and every ragged breath feels like swallowing a bag of icy razors. Bacteria doesn’t do too well in those kind of conditions, I guess.

Also, the rim wasn’t quite regulation. It was bent to the side and hung about 9 1/2 feet off the ground, on the high side. While this made me king of that particular court, able to make any shot from any angle, it didn’t do much to help me make the same shots on an actual 10 foot, regulation rim. All I really ended up doing was making myself more impervious to extreme cold and perfecting my patented “fadeaway into a snowdrift” shot, as well as my “falling down after slipping on a patch of ice runner in the lane.” Unfortunately, those shots aren’t applicable to a typical indoor basketball game.

Yet.