Crash

You think you know who you are. You have no idea. The strong, but completely accurate tag line that the 2004 movie Crash uses. Crash follows the story of many interrelated individuals all facing racism, the white district attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist white veteran cop who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, and a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets. I have had my own Crash moments back in my days of Basketball. In normal round robin play of a tournament we would obviously be facing the toughest team all day. The other team comes out for warmups and I notice they are all African American. I'm instantly intimidated. I have the thought in my head that every single one of the other players is better than me because the were black. yes, i've been playing my whole life and yes I was on a far superior team than theirs, but that didn't stop me from freaking out the entire pre-game. Finally, the game starts, I'm the center so i take the jump, seemed like a joke to me because everyone knows that white man can't jump. I won the tip. We set up the offense and I go to work down low fighting for position. I get the ball and shot fake and dip under for a basket making my defender look stupid. From that I could see, and so could the rest of my team, my team was much more disciplined and better coached than our opponents. I think we ended up winning by about 20. Down in the post is a very physical game, i guess "we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."