Jimothy Bunns | Teen Ink

Jimothy Bunns

December 12, 2017
By CampoTheGreatWhiteShark BRONZE, Apex, North Carolina
CampoTheGreatWhiteShark BRONZE, Apex, North Carolina
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Jimothy Bunns is a well put man who loves playing pickup basketball at the park. He’s 55 years young, he’s about 5 foot 5 inches short, he has to wear glasses, and for some reason he likes to wear overalls. To just round off his appearance, he was a typical white nerd. Usually nerds are unathletic and weird, but this nerd could ball. When he was young, he would always go to the park and play basketball with his friends, but once all of his friends grew out of it and moved on to bigger things, he didn’t have anyone to play with, so he just went to the nearest park he could find and play pickup basketball. Jimothy was moving today to a house in california because that was supposedly where the best courts in the country are.


So as soon as he moved to his new house in California, he went to play basketball at the nearby park. When he arrived there in his 2003 Stick shift Honda Element, he saw that everyone was a whole lot younger than him. Jimothy was 45, these kids were about 17. He jumped out of the car and walked to the court. Everyone there was so young, he couldn’t get over the fact that everyone was so darn young! He wasn’t going to let these kids decide whether he played or not, so he grew some balls and committed to playing at this park.


“I must play.” he said to himself.


  “I got next!” Jimothy screamed out.


Everyone stopped. Jimothy was frozen,


  “Is everyone okay?” he said.


The crowd of teenagers bursted out into laughner.


“You think you can play with us? Haha, gimme a break.” one of the d*****bag teenagers said.


“Um, yes. Is there something wrong with that?” said Jimothy.


“Yeah, there is something wrong with that grampa.”


“What’s the matter, this is a park, anyone can play here.”


“We know, it is a park… But it’s our park! You cannot play with us!


“But you guys haven’t even seen me play yet. Please just give me a chance to prove myself and if i'm no good then i’ll never come back. Agreed?”


The teenagers talked amongst themselves before they came to a conclusion.


“Alright grandpa, you have one chance to prove if you're any good by playing on our best player, Jamal. If your trash then you shall never come back to this court ever again. But if you any good, the court is yours to use whenever you’d like.”


“Oh thank you, thank you so much. You will not be disappointed, I promise.”


“Ugh, grow up.” one of the teenagers said while rolling his eyes.


“Alright check up. First one to three wins.” said Jamal.


Jimothy passed him the ball and Jamal dribbled for a couple of seconds and crossed over to his right and did an easy layup, or so he thought, Jimothy came up from behind and swatted it then picked it up. There were “oohs” and “ahhs” from the crowd. Jimothy dribbled the ball differently, he started going through his legs like Jamal did but it wasn’t just through his own legs, he went through Jamal’s legs too. Jamal went twisting and turning and Jimothy attacked the basket and scored.


“Alright old man, it seems you can ball after all.” Jamal said


Jimothy just stood there as he didn’t believe in talking trash.


“Check up, your ball, 1-0.” Jamal said.


“Alright bet! I’m getting closer and closer to playing at this court, I can feel it!” Jimothy thought.


Jamal handed him the ball and Jimothy planned on doing the same thing, through his legs, through Jamal’s legs, and so on, but it didn’t work like that two times in a row. Jimothy tried to go through Jamal’s legs and then he swatted it away, picked it up and now had possession of the ball.


“I'm gonna toast you on this one old man, you can count on it.” said Jamal.


“Shut up and just play the game you little twig.” said one of the elderly women watching from behind the basket.
Jamal payed no attention to her, as she was irrelevant to him. Jamal did his usual “though his legs behind his back” nonsense that Jimothy could do better.


“Jamals gonna go to his right, wait no his left! Wait no the other way!” Jimothy thought as he couldn’t keep up with these intense moves. Jamal did one final cross over that put Jimothy’s world into amuck. Jamal had just made Jimothy Bunns fall.


“OHHHHH SNAP, HE JUST MADE HIM FALL.” said one of the teenagers.


“YOU GOT PUT ON A SPIN CYCLE OLD MAN!” said another teenager.


Everyone from the crowd was laying the roasts down on poor ole’ Jimothy. He couldn’t think straight, he didn’t want to. He was so embarrassed.


“You gonna give up old man? Check up, 1-1.” said Jamal full of confidence in beating Jimothy.


Jamal did another cycle of moves and got past Jimothy. He scored again on him with an easy layup. Jimothy was torn. His self esteem was destroyed. He felt he couldn’t go on.


“Haha, check up son, 2-1.” Jamal said.


“They think i'm never gonna play basketball again.” Jimothy thought.


“I'm not about to let that happen.” Jimothy said under his breath.


“C’mon son, show me what you got!” said Jimothy.


Jamal did a quick crossover to his right, Jimothy reached in and took the ball right out of Jamal's possession.
“I’ll take that!” said Jimothy.


Jimothy was dribbling fast, faster than he ever had before. He went to his left, then to his right, and back to his left and had a clear path to the basket and slammed the ball into the basket. Everyone was dead silent.


“I didn’t know he could jump like that!”


“Did he just dunk the ball?”


“What the hell just happened?”


The crowd was in a silent frenzy, everyone was going crazy in their minds, but no one wanted to show it. You could slowly tell that the crowd was originally wanting Jamal to win, but as the game went on, people were rooting for the underdog. “The old white guy.”


“Check up, 2-2.” said Jimothy


Jamal said nothing, he was scared of Jimothy at this point.


“I’m going in now!” said Jimothy with a slightly creep smirk on his face.


Jimothy went through his legs, crossed over, went to his right to make it look like he was driving and then stepped back. Jamal fell on his butt, the crowd was as frozen as ice, they were motionless. Jamal shot, the ball flew in the air in slow motion. SWISH. The ball splattered the net. You would think from Jimothy’s last play that no one would celebrate, but you thought wrong. The whole crowd flipped up into a massive frenzy. People were going crazy because an old, unathletic white guy just beat the best basketball player at that park.  They couldn’t believe it, he had beaten their best player. Jamal was impressed, not mad or sad, just simply impressed.


“Hey man, I gotta hand it to you, your a baller. You’re welcome whenever you want at this court.” Said Jamal.
“Thanks Jamal, I really appreciate it.”


“No problem man, just keep up the good work.”


Jimothy had done a lot of good things in life, he graduated high school and went All American for basketball his senior year. He graduated college and played D3 basketball for Brooklyn college. And he was always “momma’s perfect little boy.” And for some reason, this moment had meant the most to him. He had made a great achievement in which he worked his butt off for and overcame embarrassment and underestimation. This was one of Jimothy’s prized achievements that he would never let go of.


Jimothy was so happy that his new home wasn’t going to be completely boring considering that at 55, he had no wife and no kids, he definitely wasn’t planning on having a wife or kids if he could still play basketball, he was married to the game. All he had was basketball and he now had a place to play the game that he was in love with. He knew that one day he would have to let go of basketball, when he’s too old and can’t walk or run anymore. He never wanted that day to come. He never wanted to put down what he loved so dearly. But he just knew that day would come, and when it did, he would cry. Any man would cry if they had to let go of something so special to them, for some men it was their wife, for some men it’s their children, and even for some men it’s their car. But for Jimothy Bunns it was basketball. He didn’t want to think about that yet though. He just wanted to celebrate the fact that Jimothy Bunns was now the king of that court.



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