Bitches and Basketball
Bitches and a ball
I’ve written some blogs before about not understanding men. Truth be told, I don’t understand women either. Particularly when it comes to the sisterhood of women which too often seems to resemble into a coven of whiches.
One of my supermodel friends celebrated a birthday this week and decided to do something different this year to celebrate. She bought a basketball, reserved a court, and enlisted some of her hunky friends one of whom in a coincidence is a man I work with, to coach 8 forty-something women in what was billed on Facebook as a friendly game of basketball.
Since the supermodel isn’t athletic and I was assured that neither were any of the other women, I thought this would amount to playing H.O.R.S.E., shooting a few free throws and then having lunch… or you know, a cup of coffee or something.
Instead, I got body checked and layed out flat on my ass by a 98lb girl who thought that WNBA try-outs were being held at a high-school gym in Bethesda, Maryland.
”Guard your mark” she screamed at a black-shirted teammate who was covering me. Really? Covering my old, slow, fat ass requires that level of instruction?
I took my hour and fifteen minutes of punishment and humiliation before I made the sign of the T and got the hell out of there.
Ensconced safely in a Bethesda restaurant, it turned into another learning moment for TS and I in that neither of us played sports in high school. We both had aborted attempts at swim team and I was a cheerleader (which meant something very different at our high-school than what it means at most). But we admitted that our free time was spent sweat free.
Playing basketball with these women today, I remembered everything I hate about playing team sports. Girls are mean. They are. And competitive. And my desire to be liked is greater than my need to score a point or defend a goal. If the woman who body checked me (oh, and no foul by the way) wanted the damn ball so badly, she should have asked me for it and I’d have given it to her rather than risk injury to my IT-band. Which is why I suck at sports. I miss the point. And I get that I miss it. In order to be successful in sports you have to love to win and hate to lose.
I don’t care enough about winning to risk losing…
The greater the risk, the sweeter the reward? Nothing ventured, nothing gained? Yeah, well… you don’t get your ass handed to you as often when your nose is buried in a book.
If TS and I create some mid-western spawn, we’ll have to outsource athletics to a 3rd party. If this kid wants to know about books or the arts, we’re ready. If we get a kid who wants to play soccer, we’re screwed. There is tremendous value in playing sports; they develop self confidence, encourage cooperation and competition and you learn problem skills that you don’t learn shouting “Big, Red…, Big, Big, Big Red” to an apathetic crowd of rich teenagers cheering for a losing football team.
As for me, I enjoy the solitude of running which remains my great athletic love and is something that I miss. A marathon is a bitch free course.
i just laughed when you said you’d have to outsource the soccer lessons. i too was sweat free in high school except for the pom-pon squad. and i was the only one there sweating. all those other skinny bitches never sweat a bead.
i tried intramurals in college and after game one of basketball i knew, competitive, organized sports are just not for me. the bit@$es jostled and bumped and touched me. i’ll take my witches stirring a pot of eye of newt. at least that way i get some sustenance from them too.