One of the most well-known players and characters of the National Basketball Association (NBA), Shaquille O’Neal, announced his retirement June 1.
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| Courtesy: nba.com |
I got an up-close and personal look at his shoulder and watched him “swallow” my hand at a restaurant in Florida one evening.
Three friends of mine and I took a week’s vacation to Sanibel Island in the summer of 1995. We spent the fourth day at Universal Studios in Orlando. Before heading back to the time-share condo we were borrowing, we had dinner at a Hard Rock Café.
After we ate our burgers and paid our bill, the people on the first floor of the restaurant – we were seated on the second floor – started applauding and cheering. I popped out of my seat and leaned over the railing to look down onto the first floor, but I couldn’t tell what all the commotion was about. When I turned around, my face was inches away from the Superman logo Shaq has tattooed on his right shoulder. That is all I could see. Even my peripheral vision was blocked by this huge man’s upper arm.
“We’re from Indiana!” my friend Amy yelled. The Amy I’m mentioning is not – nor is she related to – my Savior on Earth, Amy (see my Thanksgiving 2010 blog entry). Amy’s comment generated a vision of Shaq pile-driving me into the floor like a hammer drives a nail.
About a month earlier, Shaquille’s team at that time, the Orlando Magic, defeated the Indiana Pacers in a very contentious seven-game series. The Magic were then swept by the Houston Rockets in the championship round. The Pacers’ game plan was, because Shaquille was a very poor free-throw shooter, if they fouled him every time he touched the ball, the Pacers could keep the Magic from scoring. The philosophy became known as “Hack-a-Shaq”, but in 1995, O’Neal thought he was being unnecessarily beat up. The Indianapolis Star newspaper ran articles about O’Neal being angry, and columnists wrote that he was “acting like a baby” and he should “stop crying and be a man.”
So when Amy yells “We’re from Indiana!”, I thought “Oh, great. This giant is going to use me to build an express elevator to the first floor of the Hard Rock Café in Orlando, Florida.”
Not thinking, I stuck out my right hand. O’Neal’s mammoth right hand surrounded my hand like Saran Wrap around a casserole dish. My hand literally disappeared.
Fortunately, Shaquille O’Neal did not release his frustrations on this skinny tourist from the Midwest with the loud-mouth friend, and you still need to use the stairs to get from the second floor to the first floor at the Orlando, Florida Hard Rock Café.
