Of Basketball and Cristian Mason

True to my word (even though I only got a couple suggestions) I received a FANTASTIC, ALL-TIME memory from my cousin Brad. As I grow older, my memories of being really young obviously grow fuzzy and more general; it's hard to remember specific events rather than what I generally did every day. Well, one memory will remain etched in my memory with HD clarity for life: the day Cristian Mason hacked a loogie on Rocky Bowlby.

Everybody in the neighborhood passed the summers playing basketball on my hoop in my front yard (for reference purposes- this is the hoop in Sandy on Borg Drive-where I lived until I was 12). A few other kids had hoops on the street, but mine was the only one that adjusted up and down; obviously, we lowered it to 7-8' so we could dunk.

The neighborhood group was pretty unique in that we spanned a large age-range. I was roughly 10, and my cousin Brad and Cristian Mason were 14-15 range, with other kids in between somewhere (Josh Clark, Nate Carlson, Travis Weis, Seth & Travis Baker, etc). I say this is unique because I know when I was 15 I would have never spent 5 minutes with a ten year old (I did indeed think I was pretty cool becuase I had friends that were in Junior High!) I do note that Brad, Cristian, and the other neighborhood kids hadn't necessarily grown to their life-size at 15, but I for some reason was freakishly huge at that age (I reached my life-size height, but not life-size gut :), by 7th grade). All in all on any given day we had quite a few kids playing basketball in my front yard in the summer time.

One kid that usually wasn't playing with us was Chase Bowlby. For some reason, us being jerk kids as we were, we never let Chase play with us. I'm convinced looking back that it was because he was just a couple years out of the acceptable age range; he being 8 and super-small compared to my being 10 and super-huge (again, with all other guys being generally older than me). Living only a couple doors up the street, he always came down to play, and we'd always make him sit and watch (I write this thinking how I'd kick the bejeezes out of punk kids that wouldn't let my kid play with them. . . that will become relevant later).

So one day, we were playing ball and not letting Chase play as usual. Chase's dad Rocky came home from work, saw his son crying about not being able to play, and decided to come give us all a talking to about excluding him from our game. I don't remember what words were said exactly, but I do remember Cristian Mason took it upon himself (being the oldest of our group and the Bishop's son, he had more clout to say what he wanted than anybody else) to defend our actions. He was even so brash as to start yelling at Rocky. Rocky kind of got in Cristian's face (again, looking back, what was he going to do to a 15-year old kid besides yell at him? I say nothing.) and then, all-of-the-sudden, Cristian hacked up a loogie and launched it right onto Rocky's suit!

Now, reread that last sentence of that last paragraph from two different perspectives: once as a kid witnessing an all-time demoralizing insult, and once as an adult witnessing the uttermost disrespectful act a kid could possibly pull. I note that as I distinctly remember this incident launching Cristian into legendary status among the neighborhood boys, but looking at it years later from the perspective of an adult potentially being more impressed with Rocky for resisting the instinct to just knock the punk kid out (Seriously, if a teenage kid hacked a loogie on you, is it even possible that you wouldn't knock him out? I didn't think so).

Rocky didn't knock him out, but he was infuriated, "DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO DRY CLEAN THIS SUIT?!!!!! I JUST HAD THIS SUIT DRY CLEANED FOR $15!!!!!! YOU'RE GOING TO PAY FOR THIS!!!!" I assume $15 was a lot then, but regardless of the price, I've never seen somebody so mad. Needless to say, basketball was over for that day, but the legend of Cristian Mason lives on!

What a memory! I moved away a couple years later, as did lots of other kids from that street, including Cristian, Brad, and Chase. The lady that bought our house took out the hoop so when I drive by today my fondest memory is gone. I hope we didn't cause any lasting damage to either Rocky or Chase. I know Rocky hit it huge with dental insurance so I'm pretty sure things worked out just fine for him and Chase. Still, what mean kids; even though I didn't perpetuate the act, I can feel karma waiting for me when Cannon is 8 or so, for some punk kid to launch a loogie on my suit. He better have $15 handy!

Memories

I've noticed that I generally blog about my memory of something as it's triggered by something happening "in the now" if you will. Anyways, my cousin posted something similar to this a couple months ago and I thought it was interesting, but I'm going to add a little bit of my own twist to it.

His post (my cousin Aaron's) was something like this: Post a comment of a memory you have with me, any memory, whatever you want, whether you've known me forever or just a short time. He noted he would come to your blog and post a memory of you too if you made this same type of post. I will do the same but what I'm really going to do is if you post a memory I will write my own blog post with my own viewpoint of that experience-whatever it is. If this idea is totally lame you can tell me that too, but I kind of have a goal to start writing more often as I enjoy writing, but every time I think about it I feel like lately I'm getting a writer's block of sorts; maybe something like this will get me on a roll.

Fight Night!

I play basketball on Wednesday nights with my friends whenever I'm in town (which is not a lot lately). After we're done at about 10:30 we head over to the gas station, buy some drinks (mine is usually free as I've undoubtedly dominated somebody else, which in turn means I've earned a free drink on their dime:) ) and sit in the back of Britton's truck and hang out like some high school boys for a few minutes. Hey, we've even had some high school girls pull a u-turn to swing back past us to check us out! (After they saw we were a bunch of fat, 20-something married men instead of teenage boys they quickly took off--we admitted that it is unusual at 11 pm to see a group of grown men hanging out like this).

Anyways, that is not the point of the post, I'm just rambling. This past Wednesday we were talking about all of our old-time fights, post-game brawls, etc. After I left I got to thinking about fight night, definitely one of the funnest nights I've ever had.

If you've ever read my blog, it will be easy to picture the scene, as it is basically the same for any memory that related to teenage years---a bunch of dudes hanging out on a weekend night with no girls and nothing to do. We were at Jacob's house causing a ruckus. A couple guys start wrestling around and another decides to come in as a third party and deliver a devastating cheap shot elbow to the back! Hilarity ensues as we all start laughing at the tool who just took the blow (I can't remember who it was). Jacob's mom kicks us out of her house becuase we're causing too much ruckus, but now our adrenaline is all pumped up and we need to have some type of "fight club" night immediately. Ben offer's his house up as his parents aren't home. . . it's on!

The rules were as such: 1) no hitting the face. We formed a cirlce in Ben's front room, Kyle and I would usually get the action going by jumping in the middle and starting to fight, then other guys would jump in to try and cheap shot us: elbows to the back, knees to the thigh, kidney shots, stomach blows, etc. Even though you were in pain, it was so fun becuase everybody would jump in. . . while you were receiving a cheap shot to the back, you could turn around and deliver your own cheap shot to somebody else! Jeff started taking too many shots to his thigh; after a round of brawling he pulled up his shorts to reveal a monster bruise that pretty much covered the whole side of his thigh. Once we saw the weak spot, everybody was gunning for it the rest of the night. During one round I grabbed him and went in to knee him in the thigh once again; already in pain, he moved his leg outward to avoid the blow to the thigh, so instead he took a knee to the nuts! That floored him for a while, we outlawed knees or punches to the groin immediately after that:).

Once while standing on the side, Ben came up and stood in the middle of Kyle and I, then proceeded to extend his arms to both sides and land direct hits in both of our chests. He ran, we caught him, we pummeled him.

Highlight of the night, Chris Johnson was the only guy there who didn't participate. He stood on the outside of the circle up against the wall all night. We all tried to get him to come in and fight but he refused, instead just watching all night long. After a couple hours we were all beat (pun intended!) and laying around on the floor moaning in our pain. Whether he thought he was being funny or thought it was his opportunity to act tough, I don't know, but suddenly he jumped in the middle of the room screaming, "Bring it on!" There were no cheap shots to anybody else on that round, just all 10 or so of us pounding Chris Johnson. If somebody had walked in they would've thought we'd grabbed a guy off the street and dragged him in to beat him up. So classic!

I remember waking up the next morning with all types of knots in my back from all the elbows I took the night before. I was sore for a couple days. We tried to recreate the fight night multiple times after that, never to the same effect. I'm sure now it'd end up with somebody breaking a rib or something (I didn't get hurt that night, but I of course dislocated my shoulder on nearly every other night we attempted it). Teenage boys and fighting, too prime!

Football is King!

A couple weeks ago (pre-August 30th, Yes I know the exact date and you'll see how that comes into play in a second) my wife lamented, "Ohhhhhhhh! I'm so mad! Starting this Saturday you're about to become worthless for four months!" Why was I about to become worthless on Saturdays (and Sundays to a large extent, besides church of course)? Because that coming Saturday, August 30th, was kickoff day for the football season. I dare say 90%+ of males who read that last sentence had the following phrase pass through their mind, "YOU KNOW THIS!!!"

Yes, football is king. Even I can admit that, and I tout the Utah Jazz as my favorite team. I've learned over the years that the Jazz are my #1 because I follow them year-round, even in the offseason I'm always looking for news. My buddy Gerry, on the other hand, will call me in April-when football is farthest from my mind-to update me on some sophomore in high school who BYU is recruiting for 5 year from now (post-mission of course). That tells me I'm a Jazz guy; however, football is most definitely #1A. I pretty much only like the Jazz and no other NBA team or any other level of basketball. I LOVE football on every level: high school, college, and NFL.

If a football game is on, no matter what the level, I'm watching it until the end. In this past week while I've been out of town here in Washington I've watched college games, pro games, even a high school game of some USC-bound quarterback. I don't care, I love every second of it.

Rachel is so mad about Saturdays becasue she knows who is the King of the King of Sports-BYU! Two years ago, she wanted to spend Thanksgiving in Idaho Falls with her family. As soon as she suggested that, I called her Aunt in October (plenty of notice of course) to ensure she had CSTV so I wouldn't have to miss the BYU-Utah game; otherwise, she would've been spending Thanksgiving solo in Idaho Falls. Her aunt said she had it. . . she later realized she didn't have it and promptly added it to her satellite package before we came up, knowing the consequences of such a mishap could have been devastating. If I would've missed watching the Beck-to-Harline catch live, I don't know if I would've ever been able to return to Idaho Falls.

Football is so great, even playing pretend football is great. Yes, I'm talking about fantasy. Fantasy football makes games you would not usually care about (wait, that doesn't happen anyways) very interesting if you have a fantasy player on one of the teams. I play in multiple fantasy leagues, but the one I care most about is my espn league with my boys. There is nothing like smack talk all week long and glorious victories that players who actually do things on the field produce for me (two-time defending champ!). Again, "YOU KNOW THIS!!!"

Why is football so huge? I am convinced it is the scarcity factor. Only one game a week, only a few months of the year. Baseball and basketball have so many games that missing a few here and there is no big deal, but missing even a single game of the BYU season means missing them play that team for the entire year. If I miss us play UCLA this Saturday, when will I see that again? Granted, it's a rare situation where they're playing for the 3rd time in a year span, but usually missing any given game means waiting at least a year, and in non-conference games potentially waiting indefinitely, for the next game. I've missed two BYU-Utah games in my life, the two years of the mission, including the final game of Lavell's career, and I can pretty much guarantee I won't sacrifice that game again if it's at all within my power. Men across the state concur with an "amen brother!" All of this same scarcity applies to the NFL. I don't even have a favorite team, I'm pretty much happy to watch whatever game is on, whenever.

I am worthless on the weekends for a few months, and for that I apologize to my wife, who I love with all my heart. How do women put up with us?