First and foremost, don’t be fat.
That sounds rather terse, I know, but just hold on a minute and let me relate to you the events that transpired over the course of 90 minutes last night in a city league basketball game that I was involved in. A contest that will go down in my history as the greatest tie I have ever won.
I arrived on scene at a stinky gym only to find out that the majority of my team hadn’t shown up to play. In fact, the entire team forgot that 9:00 was when we tipped off. The only ones there were my equal in height buddy from high school, and a blind kid. That’s right kids, a blind kid. No lie. He was our starting point guard last night, and he can’t legally sit behind a steering wheel.
At first I was a bit nervous that the evening would end in a blow out, until I began to watch our opponents warm up, for I noticed in the midst of their pre-game shooting drills how abundantly large they were. Very large, in fact. So large, one of them was guzzling down a chilidog while shooting free-throws. Needless to say, their un-coordinated chubbyness was not something that alarmed me in the least degree.
And oh, how it was evident once the ball was tossed.
The three of us ran circles around them, ran laps in between them, ran all over them. We had a 20-point lead even before the referee saw that the clock was moving. Being the Swamp Thing that I am, I had barely broken a sweat in the first half it was that bad. There was a point in the middle of the second quarter where they just stopped moving past half court because their lethargic bodies were too tired to get back on defense. One of them even sat down by the out of bounds line and answered his cell phone, just to get a breather while we played.
Taking a 58-21 lead into halftime we were feeling pretty good. And oh, how generous we were with those 21 points we gave them. Turning to my buddy I said, ‘why don’t we just switch scores with them, and see if we can catch up? It’s worth the workout isn’t it?’ The officials at the scorer’s table agreed, since this league doesn’t have that serious of a title at stake, and so we switched sides. We were now the ones down 37 points. We were now trailing guys whose combined cholesterol was twice the size of Texas.
And that’s where it got interesting. One of our referees was also the starting point guard for our team’s biggest rival. When he heard we would be playing from a hole, he took off his zebra skin, laced up his Nikes, and said he would be taking control of the obese offense himself, and would lead them to victory. Which brings me to the second point that I would like to leave with you today.
Don’t be a jerk.
In our lives we all will have highlights, glory moments, 15-minute physical feats that we will accomplish and can relate to our posterity. Usually those have all ended by the time that we’re handed our high school diploma, and the majority of us can hang up our hats, and accept the fact that it’s time to move on and accept what the real world has in store.
But there are some who live in the distorted bio-dome also known as their titanic egos, who think they are still at that level. You know who I’m talking about. The Super Seniors, the wannabe homecoming hero athletes, Napolean Dynamite’s Uncle Rico! Those guys. The idiots who think that they are still the greatest ever. This point guard was one of those guys. He still thought that he was the neighborhood Top Dog, when in reality, he really wasn’t.
And so, with a comfortable 37-point lead, all he had to do was hold the ball at half court for 20 minutes, not move his feet, and play an extended session of Angry Birds while his mutton-munching teammates ran around wildly and the “victory” would be his. But he couldn’t do that, he had to destroy us single-handedly. He had to beat us himself. He had to prove to the handful of stay-at-home mothers watching that he, the great goggle-faced near midget, could stave off a comeback from two post players and a blind kid. That’s right, A BLIND KID!!!
And you know what, he didn’t. We jumped right back on our horses and more than doubled their point total in the second half, outscoring them 61-24, with a late last second lay-up by the kid who couldn’t see, thus resulting in an 82-82 draw. We got our workout in, the cocky point guard’s attempts were foiled, and all of the moms finally got to go home to their crying children.
If you were to keep track of the official tally, the three of us beat down that team very handily. 119-45, if it matters anything. That's right, we out powered a group of obese Vikings and an arrogant nitwit by 77 points, and we did it all with a blind kid. Seriously, how many times can I stress that?! HE WAS BLIND!!!
The two points that I learned from last night, and I hope you take from this entire post are this: 1. Don't be fat, and 2. Don't be a jerk.
And if you are going to be a fat jerk, just hope and pray you can see.
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