ABSTRACT
I became an optimist over a seventeen-second span. Actually, it took several minutes of real time, but the game clock counted down only seventeen seconds. That’s not many—fewer than it takes CBS to air a TV commercial—but these were long ones, far longer than the rushed, abbreviated seconds I live with nowadays, that ticked by on the day after I turned eleven. Each one was long enough to leave a lasting impression, to teach a lesson, though I didn’t know it at the time. I was young, and excited, and the teacher of those lessons wasn’t even in the game. He was sitting on the sidelines, watching, already aware on that March afternoon that optimism doesn’t always get you far. The green light may wink across the bay, but experience teaches us that it will almost certainly remain out of reach.
