Happy 70th Birthday Muhammad Ali

I grew up with a physically and emotionally abusive father. As most abusive parents, his abuse reached an apex when I was younger and smaller. As I grew up and got taller and bigger, the abuse slowed and eventually, when it looked as though I might be able to defend myself, it stopped altogether. This is not a new story.

I'm fifty years old. The first time I remember hearing the name Muhammad Ali was in Juanuary, 1971, when he fought Joe Frazier in New York's Madison Square Garden. The highly touted "Battle of the Century." I grew up in rural Missouri so the mere sound of the name Muhammad Ali grated on my ear. I didn't know a Muslim from muscrat. But I did know this: My DAD hated that "loud mouthed, draft dodgin' nigger." And I hated my dad. So I decided I loved Muhammad Ali.

Ali lost that fight. Frazier beat him fair and square. I collect fight films now as a hobby and I've seen the fight a hundred times. Frazier won it. And his monumental left hook in the fifteenth round should be featured in boxing textbooks.

But more to the point, I learned my first lesson in Growing Up from that fight: lose gracefully. Ali's response to the fight at the press conference, his jaw swollen literally to the size of a grapefruit: "Joe beat me. He's the champion. But I'll be back." Huh? What happened to "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee?" What happened to "I am the greatest?" What happened to "If Joe even dreams he can beat me, he oughta wake up and apologize?" Lose gracefully. And never stop trying.

Some short time later I began to box myself. I joined Golden Gloves. I learned what I could of the sweet science. I competed. I was never really very good, but I won some. And I kept trying.

In 1972, Ali got his jaw broken in the first round against a former Marine that no one outside of California had ever heard of: Kenny Norton. Ali fought the next eleven rounds with a broken jaw. He lost that fight, too. The pain must have been nearly unimaginable. And the fight (which, again, I've seen many times) was VERY close. Another lesson from Ali on Growing Up: keep trying despite adversity. Endure pain. Fight THROUGH the pain. Never let 'em see you hurt. And above all, don't quit.

Later, as with Frazier, he came back to defeat Norton twice. Lesson number three: If at first you don't succeed...face your fears AGAIN. If you know you're better than your failure - take it on again and prove it to yourself.

In 1974, Muhammad Ali fought a real-life, living, breathing boogey man: George Forman. A giant of a man that had actually crippled other fighters in the ring. He'd decimated both Frazier and Norton in previous fights. He'd hit Frazier so hard he lifted him three feet off the mat. He'd knocked Kenny Norton asleep. He beat him like a rug the year earlier and Norton didn't wake up until he was in his dressing room. As often as the movies may portray that sort of thing, the truth is in professional fighting it's nearly unheard of, this knocking the man out thing.

And now Ali, at 32, way, way past his prime as a pugilist, was facing him on the dark continent - the Congo itself, Zaire. Never in a thousand years could anyone expect to find a more compelling match up between men. Foreman could barely put a sentence together back then - he usually just glared at people if he didn't feel like talking. Ali, on the other hand, had done the impossible over the past 10 years: he had gone from Most Hated Athlete in America to Most Adored Human on Earth. And, of course, he reveled in it. He talked about everything - tooth decay, racism, boxing, music, magic tricks, horror movies, shoes and boots, movie stars, politics...anything that caught his fancy. Smiling, laughing, giggling, chortling, merry-making his way through the sweltering pre-rainy season of Kinsasha. Not a care in the world. As the poet, Marianne Moore, called him, ‘the smiling pugilist.’

Of course, that wasn't true, though. Ali often wasn’t smiling in Africa. Ali was worried. Years later he acknowledged his fear in an interview with George Plimpton. "I was afraid for my children," he said, "I was afraid if maybe Big George broke my spinal column or something, how would I feed my children?" It is difficult to imagine the fear that must have enveloped him for those three months prior to the fight.

He fought "The Rumble in the Jungle" against George Foreman on October 31st, 1974, at three in the morning (prime time in America). He gave birth to the "rope-a-dope." He took back his title and knocked Big George to the canvas for ten seconds in the eighth round. He hit him with a series of lightning quick, sniper-like lefts and rights that were almost invisible to the naked eye in their fury and quickness. It was . . . magnificent.

Another lesson: Might isn't always right. Face your fears. Do your best. If you can't go over the wall...figure a way to go around it. Think on the spot. Don't be tied to a pre-arranged plan if it isn't working. Fear is sometimes just and only that - fear.

I met him in New York in 1989. Parkinson's Syndrome had changed him irrevocably by then. There was a hint of the old Ali smile. A glimmer in the eyes. I shook his hand in a diner on 37th and 3rd. He had very big hands. I leaned in close to him and said in his ear very quickly - there were many others trying to touch him - "You helped me grow up and be who I am today." He stopped what he was doing (signing autographs and shaking hands) for just a heartbeat, a blink, and looked full square in my eyes. I had tears in them. He said, "Boy, I was something, wasn't I?"

You were.

You are.

Some are Gone and Some Remain

One of the many cool things I got this year for Christmas is a new Blackberry Torch. It's a sleek little number, very much in the vein of a Star Trek 'communicator.' As I looked at the online tutorial I began to see the seemingly endless functions it can perform. Now, it's not in the same league as, say, the new iphone, but it more than meets my communicative needs. Frankly, I never thought I really needed the whole fancy-schmancy phone thing. Text and talk...that's pretty much been my basic need when it comes to cell phones. Hell, I'm old enough to remember when they were roughly the size of a shoebox.

One of the things, however, it doesn't do instantaneously is download all of the numbers in my old phone to the new one. I think this might be because my old phone was, well, old. The sim card is ancient. So I guess they're just not compatible enough to automatically upload one to another. Consequently I found myself in the stupifyingly boring position of having to move my phone contacts from one device to another one by one.

And as I did so I suddenly and quite unexpectedly found myself deeply moved. A couple of the numbers are obsolete because the people they were assigned to are dead. One from an apparent drug overdose in an anonymous hotel room in Missouri and another from a quick and senseless one-car accident in the middle of the night on a lonely road in Arizona driving home after taking his daughter to her freshman year in college. Another is very sick these days due to complications stemming from HIV related illnesses. And another is fresh out of drug and alcohol rehab, shaky and scared but doubtless hopeful and fresh, too. And one is struggling day to day, forever optimistic, raising two special needs kids in a suburb in Colorado. Another once as close to me as a brother but now a stranger because we both fell victim to distance, apathy and the breathtaking speed of life.

So I found myself taking this unplanned trip down memory lane as I transferred these lifeline numbers from one phone to the next, numbers I used to call as regularly as breath. On this first day of January, 2012, I find myself attached, professionally and personally, to a whole new set of human beings. And I sit and punch in the new names, the new numbers, the new set of circumstances, the new relationships that capriciously develop, and I try and remember why I'm no longer close to old chums and lovers and family that once crowded my every concerned moment. What turn in the road separated us? When did I, or they, stop obsessing over our mutual well being? How did what was once so important become a plot line in a television show that can be turned off or on at whim? Sometimes it's easy to spot the break. I came here and she went there, or I turned left and he turned right, or I moved on and they stayed stuck. But other times, other quick, lightning flash memories, aren't as easily sorted out.

I despise and am ashamed of the out of sight, out of mind reality of my life. This blog notwithstanding, those few people close to me will tell you without hesitation how fiercely private I am. I have found myself in the fortunate and equally unfortunate position throughout my adult life of carefully choosing those close to me. Consequently once I've made that very conscience choice I think it safe to say I am loyal to a fault. So I was not only mystified but dumbfounded at the parade of faces that came to mind as I slowly and painstakenly gathered the names and numbers from my old life and plugged them into my new life. The process made me feel both emotionally removed and purposely callous all at once. And yet I didn't set out to be either.

But I don't think my particular situation is so terribly different from others. The only constant is, indeed, change. I've never been a big fan of change, though. People grow up, people grow apart, people move away, people die, people fall out of love, people lose hope and people get old. And that's just the way it is and frankly I've never cared for it.

One number after another, each drawing to mind a picture of a relationship. And some numbers, belonging to the dead, gone in an instant with the gentle touch, the swift brush of the finger over the delete button. One moment there, a tangible chunk in my phone, in my life, the next gone, deleted, a memory. A quick picture of sharing a halcyon and laughter-filled era of our lives together and then moving on, the next number, the Los Angeles number, the number with no stakes attached to it, no history or empathy, keep that number, they're still alive, they may be useful, they may be called upon.

I found all of this to be a microcosm of my feelings about moving from 2011 to 2012, a dry and hushed exercise in 'out with the old, in with the new.' At midnight last night my wife and I shared a kiss, spoke quietly about our hopes for the new year, some slender and silly, some magnificent and life-changing and she slipped into our bed to sleep and I continued my epic task of deciding who took the journey from one phone to the next, from the old life to the new, from 2011 to 2012. As I did so, each number held a face, an episode, a moment of genuine care and some made it over and some were left behind. But each one was, for a heartbeat or a lifetime, a great and wondrous symphony or a delightful measure of unusual grace notes in a minor key. Each one conjured up a face and a memory. And even the ones gone, the ones I can't call from either phone ever again, received a warm remembrance.

And so goodbye 2011, you gone and lovely year and hello 2012, you new and clever year, I look forward to the reinvention. My Torch is loaded and ready to go. A little lighter than the one before but full of new tricks and new numbers.

See you tomorrow.