Spring Break: Day 2

Today I ventured once more to the harsh, unforgiving courts of my local middle school. Today was about redemption. Records, not one’s will, are meant to be broken. However, the twist in this story appears quite early. While I was still doing my usual warmup, someone came up to me and introduced himself. I shall call him Charlie from UC Davis, or just Charlie for short.

Charlie seems like a cool guy. Charlie is also quite fearless. There was a group of 10 mini-Hulks playing basketball. They were all about 6 feet tall, and had arms the size of my head. They reminded me of Michael Jordan’s opponents in the movie Space Jam. Charlie from UC Davis asked if I wanted to try to get in on a game with them. He said it would just be for fun, but I do not see the fun in having the ball ricochet from someone’s hand and into my face.   I was very hesitant but I said yes. I still do not know why I said yes. Perhaps I was feeling reckless with my life. Fortunately for my livelihood, the mini-Hulks were playing their last game. I know that they were not lying to spare our feelings because they left soon afterwards.

Me and Charlie decided to play with some other people instead. They were two years younger than me, and they annoyed me because they were all better than I was. We first played 3’s, which was alright. Then, more of their friends came and we decided to play fours, to 21.

My team lost, and I feel I am partially to blame. I usually like to exaggerate because it makes things more amazing but what I say next is not an exaggeration. I played horribly. I had about 10 layup attempts, and one of them went in. I shot 3 baseline jumpers, and two of them were airballs and one of them was blocked. I had about 10 turnovers. They started calling me Ben Wallace, but that is not accurate because Ben Wallace can make layups sometimes. Once I got the ball and was wide open to take a 3 pointer. Two of my teammates frantically bellowed at me to take the 3. I usually do not take 3 pointers because I am very bad at them, but that time I succumbed to peer pressure. It hit the backboard and then hit someone’s head.

At least it was fun because I knew one person there, even though I had only known Charlie from UC Davis for about an hour and I will probably never see him again.