Two lumps of sugar, please

he sweetest phone call I ever recieved came on a Monday morning in June, 2002, at 9:10 am. The caller was the commissioner of my association, the PBOA (Portland, Oregon). The main reason he called was to praise my work at camp the weekend before � and to award me varsity status. Now both items felt terrific: Praise from any authority always feels great, and varsity status after three seasons is unusual in our association.

But the best part was the reason he gave for those attentions, which was that I had "improved more in three years than anyone else I've ever seen in 30 years as commissioner." That is a sentence that still flashes in neon red in my memory at least once a day during basketball season.

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