Dame Wilburn
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
Some random snowy Saturday, when I was a freshman in college, I sat down, at the cafeteria table with my friends, the Klingons. Now, they basically were an amalgamation of dudes that you would never let into a fraternity. They were art majors and theater majors and English majors, and they were all like heavy duty sci-fi nerds and Trekkies.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
And when I sat down, these guys were talking about football. Now, football is my favorite sport. And I used to spend every Sunday watching the Detroit Lions lose with my mother. And every Sunday, my mother would say, Damien, you could play for the Lions. I mean, you could play for the Lions.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
Now, I'm sure she meant it as an insult, but I took it to mean that my latent athletic ability meant that I could be a football player. So when they were discussing this at breakfast, my ears popped up and I said, are you guys gonna play football? And they said, absolutely. Now I need you to understand that the Klingons had made themselves into a fraternity and they all had nicknames.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
So there was Oscar the Grouch, Beaver, Chew Toy, there was Dr. Detroit, and then there was Buddha. Now Buddha was 6'4 and weighed about 300, 325 pounds. He was a wrestler, had a 4.0 GPA, a theater major, and he sang tenor in the Magical Ensemble. This is what happens when you go to a liberal arts school. So I said, yeah, I want to play football, but are you guys playing real football?
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
Now, I'm not an athlete, so the way I had gotten out of doing any athletics was telling everybody I wanted to play football. The way I had gotten out of playing football is that with a girl, most people want to play touch football or play flag or whatever. So when I said real football, they said, what do you mean? I said, I mean tackled. And the guys looked around and said, well, no.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
And I said, well, if you're not going to play tackle, I'm not going to play with you. And they said, you want to play tackle? Yeah. They're like, all right. Meet us at the front lawn of the school in about 30 minutes. Turn your phones off. I go back to the dorm, change into my most fluffy, cushiest clothes, and I am excited because I've seen the Lions play. I know how to play football.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
I'm prepared. So we get outside. When I get outside, everybody is like picking what they want, what position they want to play. And I say, linebacker. They said, you sure you want to be a linebacker? I'm like, look, I don't run, I don't catch, I don't throw. The best I can bring to the table is I'm an immovable object. Linebacker.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
And I knew that football couldn't be that complicated because it made perfect sense. You attack whoever isn't dressed like you. I got it. The guys that are wearing blue are on my side. You're wearing purple, you die. I figured it out. So we go to line up. and Buddha lines up across from me. Now, I go into a three-point stance. Again, I've watched football, so I know what I'm doing.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
So I go into my three-point stance, and Buddha gets into his, and I figure this would be a perfect time to sort of smile at him and remind him that I'm a human being. You know, like, I need you to sort of pull up instead of murdering me. When I looked at Buddha, He wasn't there. Have you all watched Shark Week? You know, how when a shark goes to bite you, the eyes roll over white?
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
He had that kind of thing. Y'all remember Jaws, when the guy said, he's got, he's like a doll's eyes, like his dead eyes. You know, he doesn't even seem to be living until he bites you. He had those eyes. And I knew... I was in trouble. I was either gonna have to walk away and hear this story for the rest of my life. You know, Dame was gonna play football, but then she saw Buddha and she quit.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
I didn't want that to be the narrative. So I get even deeper into that three-point stance, and I hear, hut, hut, hut! And then nothing. Have you ever been hit by a train? Have you ever been hit by a train that was full of other trains? When I woke up slash came to, I looked over to my right and there was two inches of dirt, an inch of dead grass, and another two inches of snow.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
Buddha had used me to dig a tunnel. The ground was so messed up that when the spring came, maintenance would go out and put in more turf in that spot. When the feeling came back in my fingers and my toes, I tried to play it off. So I popped up out the hole. I told the guys, I forgot I had an appointment today. I need to go change.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
So I apologized for my absence, which was coming quickly, and I jogged into the dorm. By the time I got to my dorm door, that's when the pain hit. I got inside, choked down a couple aspirin, took the hottest shower of my life, and stretched out on my bed. I didn't even make it to dinner. Moving seemed an impossibility. The next day I was feeling much better.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
So I got up and I walked into the cafeteria and all the Klingons stood up and they all started clapping. And I walked over to the table and said, what are y'all clapping about? And they said, you're the first person in history to be tackled by Buddha who walked off the field under their own power. That story spread like wildfire throughout the entire school.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: Football!
Now, it didn't endear me enough to the menfolk to get me any dates. I'm assuming knowing that a woman could get tackled by a six foot four dead-eyed monster and survive it isn't really sexy. But I figured out something else. My mother was right. I could have played for the Lions.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
So the edge of our basketball court was about three inches from the wall, and there was no padding. So when you played on our turf, we could cut a corner like a sumbitch, so you were already in our world. So these tuna girls are running flat face into this brick wall, and Mr. Honey's like, we got him, we got him. So the Waldorf team had two moves. We had a gold move and maroon.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
So if he called gold, that meant you passed the ball to Angela. If he called maroon, that meant you passed the ball to Angela quicker. Because... Angela Taylor, if you know who she is, tell her I said this. Angela Taylor was the only person on our team who could shoot the ball. So the rest of them were like, get it to Angela, get it to Angela.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
Angela played about nine million minutes that one year because she never came off the court. So it's the last game. We're playing tuna high, and I start going through the paint, right? And the idea is that I get in the paint, and I ditch the Angela. So I'm going through the paint. I go and do a layup, and the damn ball goes in. And I actually scored.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
My mother wasn't there because we had been so bad so long it was crushing her soul to keep coming to the games. I go home and I tell her I made a layup. She said, you need to tell me what you think a layup is. And I said, this is what a layup is. And she said, oh my God, you got one. I said, yeah, so you have to come to the banquet. So at the end of the school year, my mother shows up.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
We're at Waldorf. When they call you across the stage, they give your stats. And they say, Damian Wilburn, total number of points for the year, six. Total number of fouls, 23. Total number of technical fouls, 59. And I stand by that record. Thank you.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
That's good. So I don't know if you can tell it by looking at me, but I'm not necessarily an athlete. Now... If you back up to when I was in ninth grade, I was actually, if you can believe it, less athletic than I am now. My mother and I didn't really see eye to eye on a lot of things, and two of them happened to be the two things she was good at, which was school and basketball.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
And I was terrible at school and anything that required movement. My school was a Detroit Waldorf school and they were trying to figure out how to assimilate us into the general population because they were getting ready to close the high school down and we had been an enclave to ourselves for a long time. So for whatever reason, Waldorf decided to form a girls basketball team. Now,
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
I didn't want to be on the basketball team. I just figured that I wasn't going to get A's in school, and I wasn't going to do homework ever. So maybe this was just another way of getting on my mother's good side. Now, what I planned to do was ride the pine. Like, I was going to join and get a uniform and then sit down. And then never... get on the court ever.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
But all of the girls in my school chickened out. So I ended up on Junior Varsity. Now, the problem with Junior Varsity was there was only two of us. on junior varsity. The problem with varsity was there was only five of them. So as a non-basketball player who didn't want to run and had to get their uniform let out, I spent a lot of time playing basketball.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
Now my mother decided that this, because she was a physical education major, she was the first African-American woman to coach basketball in the state of Georgia. So she decided to help me. which turned out to be an even larger problem. Number one, she sort of stopped playing basketball, but she kept watching it, and she was trying to give me things that I could do
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
at my size, so I was good for what this thing is called, a pick and roll. She's like, you're like the kind of person that can set a pick. And I said, why can't I set a pick? She said, because you're big as hell. So that's 90% of a pick is to be big as hell and flop. And I was like, what's flop? She's like, well, what's going to happen is they're going to hit you and you're going to fall down.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
And I said, why am I falling down if it didn't hurt? She's like, see, this is what I'm trying to explain to you. You are so big you can foul and then you go to the foul line, make foul shots. That's the only way you're going to be a benefit to your team. And I said, but I can't shoot foul shots.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
She's like, I recognize this, but your numbers are gonna be, you're gonna get fouled so much, you will get multiple opportunities. So she starts teaching me how to do ball handling. I'm terrible at ball handling. She's teaching me how to shoot foul. You know, pop your wrist, pop your wrist. I'm like, what are you talking about? She's talking to me about, basically, I was like a theater geek.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
So I decided that on this basketball, Mr. Honey, who still teaches gym at Waldorf, said, you need to figure a role. You need to have a role. So I took the role of enforcer. I don't think that's what he meant. But I decided that I was going to be like the linebacker equivalent of a basketball player.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
Now, I also had this weird asthma thing where if I was running in fresh air or doing too much, my throat would go cold. So I'm in my Waldorf basketball uniform, big as hell, extra fabric in it because I'm big as hell, with a bandana tied around my head, looking for bitches. Because that's all I know how to do. So every time I saw somebody that wasn't dressed like me, I'd bring the paint.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
But that's not how basketball is supposed to work. So... We're playing Our Lady Star of the Sea, affectionately referred to as Tuna High. What's up, Tuna High? So we're playing them. Now, I don't know if any of you have been to the Detroit Waldorf School, but it was designed by Albert Kahn. And Albert Kahn is a wonderful architect, but Albert Kahn don't know shit about designing gyms.