Albatross Read online

  “I was thinking of maybe a double-breasted suit, perhaps grey flannel,” I joked. I wasn’t used to being measured by my gym teacher.

  “A perfectly tailored remark under the circumstances,” she replied. “Now, just bear with me for a few more minutes and all will be made clear.”

  She took a few more measurements, for good, um, measure, and then sat back down at her desk.

  “At ease, soldier.”

  I lowered my limbs.

  “Can you sit for just a few more minutes?” she asked.

  “Well, I may take a look at the dress shirts, and maybe a tie to go with the suit.”

  She indulged me with a smile and waved me to a desk, then pulled a very nice-looking fountain pen from the backpack that rested on the floor against the leg of her desk. Even though her hands were quite large—okay, they were massive—the tortoise-shell acrylic pen was still sizeable.

  “Is that an Edison?” I asked, leaning in.

  “It is indeed. You know your pens, Mr. Coryell.”

  “It’s the Pearl, right? In Aztec Flake?”

  “Very impressive, Mr. Coryell,” she replied. “Here, try her little sister, the Pearlette.”

  She pulled a smaller version of the same pen, in the same beautiful resin, from her pack and passed it over to me along with a Rhodia dotPad. I unscrewed the cap and noted the medium steel nib. Such a beautiful pen. And it wrote so nicely, leaving a wet line in a lovely, almost plummy colour.

  “Wow. Very smooth for a steel nib.”

  “Some of my smoothest writers are steel nibs,” she replied.

  “And the ink?”

  “It’s Pelikan Edelstein Turmaline,” she replied. “If I’m not mistaken, it was the ink of the year in 2012.”

  “Yes, it was,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to order a bottle now that the price has dropped a bit.”

  “So why the interest in fountain pens?” she asked. “Where did that come from?”

  “A couple years ago I read an article online about the writing instruments of several famous writers. Some of them used pencils, but many wrote with fountain pens. Arthur Conan Doyle favoured the Parker Duofold. Hemingway liked Montegrappa pens. Mark Twain used the Conklin Crescent Filler. So I bought a cheap TWSBI and fell hard. I want to be a writer some day, and I think fountain pens give me some kind of link to writers of the past I admire. The feeling I have when the nib is on the paper is almost the same as experienced by all those great writers. I guess that must sound weird.”

  “First of all, Mr. Coryell, you speak like a writer. Secondly, that was one of the sanest explanations for the often inexplicable fountain pen habit I’ve ever heard.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Mine is a simpler explanation. I inherited my grandfather’s 1946 Parker Vacumatic in Azure Blue with a super-smooth medium nib. After I had the diaphragm replaced, it wrote like a champ, and still does. And that’s all it took for me.”

  She moved to the calculator and spent two or three minutes furiously pumping in measurements and jotting down numbers in the hand-drawn table on her pad. She then capped her pen, put it down on her desk, and again picked up the journal. I turned my head a bit to read the title upside down. Scandinavian Journal of Kinesiology and Sports Medicine.

  “Ahhhh, yes, ye olde SJKSM,” I deadpanned. “I let my subscription lapse a few years ago.”

  She ignored me and turned to a page about halfway through, marked with a creased and crinkled Post-it note. A table of figures took up most of the page. She placed her pad of scrawled numbers next to it and lowered her head to the data. She uncapped the pen again and as the large nib on the Edison Pearl tracked down the page over and over, she talked to herself.

  “Baseball, no. Pole vault, not bad, but not really. Discus, hmmmm, no. Hurdles, not close enough.”

  Then she sat quietly for a moment, her pen yet again tracing the table and flitting over to her pad. Then she snapped her eyes to mine. Her gaze was quite intense and left me a little alarmed. I talk when alarmed, often attempting humour. When it works, it feels good. When it falls flat, not so much.

  “I really hurt myself on the hurdles last year, if that helps,” I said.

  She ignored me again and went back through the figures one more time. She was shaking her head, looking from her pad of figures to the journal’s figures to my figure.

  “Astonishing.”

  “Not really,” I replied. “Lots of other guys hurt themselves at hurdles. Phil Lester’s voice is still slightly higher than it was before, you know, his hurdle incident.”

  “Mr. Coryell, have you ever played golf?”

  Chapter 2

  SEPTEMBER 2013

  “GOLF? YOU MEAN the whole little-white-ball-in-the-hole thing?”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “Have you ever played?”

  “I’ve never even held a club in my hands,” I replied.

  “Given that golf is best played with a club in your hands, I’ll take that as a no.”

  She returned her eyes to her calculations and just shook her head.

  “Well, you’ll be holding one soon,” she said

  I had no idea where this was going. She measures my arms and legs, crunches some numbers, and arrives at golf?

  “Now you’ve lost me.”

  “I’m not surprised. Okay, you now deserve a full explanation. Have a seat and I’ll try to summarize it for you. So as not to bore you unduly, I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version of this obscure Swedish professor’s interesting but not yet universally accepted theory,” she explained, handing me the journal before standing up and writing PIPP on the blackboard. The journal was opened to an article titled “Body Type Analysis for Predictive Innate Pinnacle Proficiency (PIPP) in Major Sports.”

  “All right. Are you ready?”

  I nodded.

  “The PIPP theory was developed by Professor Ingemar Gunnarsson, a biomedical engineer and kinesiologist at the University of Adelaide. He hypothesizes that every human being, regardless of athletic inclination, has a body that is suited to perform competently in at least one sport, and often more. The problem is, most people never actually try the sport for which their body is optimally suited. He argues that even seasoned athletes, who are quite proficient in the sports they happen to play, might have been the very best in the world in a different sport they’ve never tried. Are you with me so far?”

  “I think so.” I still wasn’t sure where this was going and how it affected me, but I had an idea a golf course waited at the end of the story.

  “Right, then. Onwards,” she said. “This theory took him fifteen years to develop, despite ridicule from more traditional academic quarters. His algorithm involves a series of body measurements that, when evaluated as standalone benchmarks and more importantly as a series of ratios, can be mapped against the projected optimal numbers for about twenty-seven different sports, all based on elite athletes whom Dr. Gunnarsson has studied using an advanced computer modelling methodology. His optimal numbers represent an extrapolation into uncharted territory.”

  My mind began to drift. I understood that a person might have a body better suited for bobsledding than basketball, but what was the point? And what did it have to do with me? But I held my tongue and tried to catch up.

  “It’s a fascinating theory to contemplate. Just think how heartbreaking it would be to learn, after a twenty-year journeyman career in the minor leagues of professional baseball, never having made it to the majors, that all that time you were supposed to be playing professional jai alai in the Philippines and could have been among the best in the world. More simply put, imagine if Michael Phelps was afraid of the water and never learned to swim?”

  “Hmmm. That is kind of interesting, I guess,” I said. “Maybe Canada could have picked up a few more swimming medals at the last Olympics had Phelps been scared of the water.”

  I was trying to follow and I thought I understood what she was getting at, but again, what did it
matter?

  “Let’s forget about Mr. Phelps, and talk about you, Mr. Coryell,” she said. “When viewed through the lens of Professor Gunnarsson’s work, you appear to be very special, at least in theory. Judging by the ratio of your arm length to your leg length, your torso to your overall height, and the dozen or so other blessed measurements and ratios dictated by an obscure but perhaps brilliant Swedish kinesiologist, you, Mr. Coryell, should be quite the prodigy—on paper.”

  “Prodigy on paper?” I replied. “You mean my dream of being a writer might come true?”

  “Well, I hope you do realize that dream, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I was referring not to your writing skills but in part to your orangutanal arms.”

  “And all this time I just thought I was lanky,” I replied. “I had no idea I’d crossed into the orangutanal zone. And that somehow makes me special?”

  “In the eyes of Professor Gunnarsson and his theory, your numbers make you very special, son. And to think lightning struck on the fourth student I measured. What are the odds?”

  “But it makes no sense. I’ve never really been into sports, and I’m not exactly a gifted athlete. At least, I don’t think I am.” I was as coordinated as the next guy but had never been obsessed with sports the way some of my friends were. I’d rather read a good story, or better still, write one. So it was hard to get my head around what Ms. Davenport was saying and what it meant.

  “But here’s the key. One part of Gunnarsson’s hypothesis turns traditional athletic performance theory on its head. If, according to his theory, your body type scores above the ninety-fifth percentile for a certain sport, your success in that sport is not dependent on the conventional approach of constant practice and refinement. In fact, at that level, practice of any kind actually compromises performance in these special individuals.”

  “Wait a second,” I interjected. “Practice is bad? It doesn’t make perfect?”

  “Hang on, son. Stay with me here,” she said. “You see, Gunnarsson theorizes that for these rare individuals above the ninety-fifth percentile, it’s the natural makeup of the body that has equipped them to excel. He argues practice is not natural at all. In fact, it’s the very antithesis of natural. It forces your body’s natural positions, rhythms, and motions into unnatural patterns assumed to be optimal for that sport, and anchors them through repetition. In fact, to reverse engineer his theory, if you require constant practice to be competent in a sport, your Gunnarsson score will fall far short of ninety.”

  “So the best of the best, whether they know it or not, are gifted with natural superpowers that can be hurt by practice?” I asked. My head was starting to fog up. This whole theory seemed ass-backwards to me.

  “Precisely. He hypothesizes that if you score above the ninety-fifth percentile—a Gunnarsson score of ninety-five—you really shouldn’t practise, but simply do what feels most natural. Let your perfect body do what it naturally wants, and you will be rewarded by peak athletic performance in your particular sport. That’s his theory in a nutshell.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and gave my brain a shake, as if trying to banish a maelstrom of conflicting ideas from my head—which, incidentally, was exactly what I was trying to do.

  “So, let me see if I understand what you’re saying,” I said, squinting in thought. “It’s not about dedication, perseverance, commitment, practice, practice, practice, it’s just naturally using the gift of a body perfectly suited for a particular sport? It has nothing to do with the person, just the body.”

  “Correct, but that applies only to those rare specimens whose Gunnarsson scores are above the ninety-fifth percentile. He figures below that score, practice can help,” she said. “Now, you’re probably wondering just how many athletes there are walking around with scores above ninety-five in various sports?”

  I wasn’t wondering about that at all. I was more concerned about being late for my date with Allison tonight. But…

  “Right,” I replied. “I was just going to ask.”

  “Ahh, therein lies the rub. That’s what I meant earlier about his optimal numbers being an extrapolation into the unknown. Dr. Gunnarsson has never encountered an athlete, let alone a civilian, with a score higher than eighty-nine, and he’s worked with Olympic gold medallists and world champions. That’s why this is still just theory, conjecture, informed speculation, and why it hasn’t ever been embraced by other researchers. Dr. Gunnarsson is a bit of a rogue. I like rogues.”

  “And the Gunnarsson scores of the other guys in my class were only okay?” I asked.

  She flipped back to the page where she’d recorded the scores for Eric, Scott, and Ahmed.

  “They just barely entered the scale for football and hockey. Ahmed had the highest Gunnarsson score, at 71.4 in hockey. Nothing special. Average at best. According to the PIPP theory, none of them will ever earn a living playing sports.”

  “And from your earlier question, I’m assuming my Gunnarsson score for golf, a game I’ve never played, or even wanted to try, is quite high.”

  She glanced back at her pad of figures and then looked at me, nodding. Her voice dropped to a whisper.

  “Yes, it is, son.”

  “Well, how high?”

  “99.2.”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN I GOT home, I made myself a sandwich and read a photocopy of the journal article. Chock full of scientific jargon and obscure references that meant nothing to me, it was tough slogging and very dry—parched, even. I actually didn’t think the writing was very good. Then I remembered that Professor Gunnarsson wasn’t writing in his native language. But I did add a few new words to my vocabulary, so it wasn’t a complete loss. I skipped over some sections, but I read most of the article. I didn’t glean much more than I had already learned from Ms. Davenport’s briefing, except perhaps that Dr. Gunnarsson must have had a lot of time on his hands to plunge quite so far down this rabbit hole. What I was really left with was the idea that if you truly are perfectly and innately designed for a certain sport—with a Gunnarsson score of ninety-five or higher—practice will actually hurt your performance, not help it. It just seemed so counterintuitive, yet I could kind of see a sliver of sense in it all, too.

  Dad arrived home as usual, about 5:15. We were cooking dinner for the family that night. Actually, we cooked together most nights. Mom usually got home a little later.

  “Hey, Dad. How was your first day back?” I asked when I joined him in the kitchen.

  “Well, it could have been worse, I guess, but not much. I’ve got a group of tough guys and delinquents. They disrupted the class for a good part of the day, mainly the young men, but a couple of the young women had mouths on them, too. I can already tell it’s going to be a tough and tiring year.”

  “Dad, they can’t be that bad, they’re only in grade four,” I replied. “What are they, eight years old?”

  “Adam, you have no idea what can happen when eight-year-olds organize. It’s like when primates learn about tools. It’s a game changer.”

  “You can handle it, Dad. You always do. Just remember, you know more than they do.”

  “Maybe, but I’m still vastly outnumbered,” he said as he pulled the chicken thighs from the meat drawer.

  We worked away in the kitchen, cooking dinner and emptying the dishwasher. We were getting close by the time Mom walked through the door and kicked off her shoes. She collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table. She was an engineer at PrimeHydro, the provincial power provider.

  “Hi, guys. Something smells great,” she said while rubbing first one foot and then the other. “And have I mentioned that my shoes are killing me a little more each day?”

  “I’m not surprised,” I replied. “They look like medieval torture devices.”

  “That’s exactly what they are,” she agreed. “It’s all part of the patriarchal conspiracy to oppress women in the workplace. And I wouldn’t be surprised if an engineer—obviously a man—designed them. I
tell you, the best part of my day is when I’m on the site and have to don my steel-toed boots. They’re like walking on pillows.”

  “Any meltdowns today?” I asked.

  “None of the reactor variety, but a few of our project management staff who are a little too focused on task completion dates briefly lost their, um, minds, and needed to visit the quiet room for a bit. Other than that, just another day in nuclear paradise.”

  Mom was part of a team of engineers refurbishing one of the nuclear reactors at the Pickering station, just outside of Toronto. I thought she and her job were very cool. I still do.

  “I’ve got the table,” she said, standing up and limping to the drawer for the placemats.

  “Just two, Mom,” I said. “Alli and I are going to the Irving reading at Harbourfront.”

  “Right.”

  After filling in my folks about Ms. Davenport and my boundless potential as a professional golfer, I booked it over to Alli’s house. Allison and I both lived in Leaside, a well-established, upper-middle-class residential neighbourhood in midtown Toronto with house prices that, according to my parents, were now strictly upper class. It was a very warm night—not unusual for Toronto in September. I only had about ten minutes to make the thirteen-minute journey and still be on time. I ran the first stretch but walked the last little bit so I wouldn’t be swimming in sweat by the time I got there. I made it at exactly 6:15, my face shimmering with perspiration.

  “Did you sprint all the way over, or are you just glowing because you’re thrilled to see me?” Alli asked when she came to the door.

  “Well, because we promised to be honest with one another, I confess that it’s strictly the glowing-because-I’m-thrilled-to-see-you thing,” I replied. “Any running I did contributed nothing to my glow, and was solely in service of seeing you sooner.”

  “There you go with that alliteration again. Are you a writer?”

  “Why yes, I am. And one day I’ll be rich and famous.”