Month: March 2009

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines “STUPID” as – a: slow of mind b: given to unintelligent decisions or acts : acting in an unintelligent or careless manner c: lacking intelligence or reason.

Now if this were a multiple choice quiz on which definition correctly applies to the actions in this story the correct answer would be SECRET choice d: all of the above.

Back in High School there was a family that goes to our church who lives in Mound City. Every year they would get the city pool reserved so that whoever wanted to from our church could go there. We always had picnics and games and swimming of course. there was a park next to the pool and in the park there was a basketball court. I have never been very “active” in doing ANY kinds of sports, with the exception of the OCCASIONAL front yard football and baseball games that we played every once in while. My best friend back then and my VERY best friend to this day is named Carl. I love Carl to death and i mean no disrespect AT ALL when i say that Carl is a pretty BIG guy. Growing up I think he was about 300 pounds or so. Well Carl and I had finished eating and had wandered off and ended up on the basketball court. We found and basketball and just started shooting around. Have you ever seen that movie “Along Came Polly”? It has Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, and Philip Seymore Hoffman. There is one part in the movie where Ben Stiller and Philip Seymore Hoffman are on a basketball court shooting around and Philip Seymore Hoffman keeps shooting the basketball thinking he is “THE MAN” but every time he shoots he misses… that is kinda what this was like. We kept shooting the basketball and missing like CRAZY!!! Well we stopped for a bit and Carl gets this BRIGHT idea in his head. Now one of Carl and I’s favorite movies growing up was the movie “BIO-DOME” with Pauly Shore and Stephan Baldwin. (i watch A LOT of movies and tend to relate things to movies if you couldn’t tell.) Well in the movie there are a couple parts when Pauly Shore needs to climb up to things and so he tells Stephan Baldwin to “TURN INTO A TABLE.” At which point Stephan Baldwin gets down on all fours and Pauly Shore climbs on his back. Well as we were standing there Carl says to me “Hey do you think I could dunk the ball if i jumped off your back? Quick TURN INTO A TABLE!!!” At this point of the story i would like to remind you of Carl’s weight!!! I looked at him like he was crazy and I said “NO WAY!!” so then he was like “Well how about if i turn into a table and you can try to dunk it.” Well APPARENTLY for some reason i thought this was a GREAT idea because i totally was going to try it. So Carl gets down on all fours and i climbed on his back with basketball in hand. Now i don’t know how many of you people reading this have ever tried to jump off of a fat man’s back so let me just say it doesn’t work AT ALL!!! When I tried to push off of his back with my feet to get some “air” all that really happened is my foot ROLLED off of his “back fat”. As i was falling Carl dove out of the way so i wouldn’t fall on him. As i was laying there on the ground in pain Carl walks over and says “Man, you think you got it bad, my back hurts!!” By this time one of the church members who saw the whole thing had run over to check to make sure everyone was okay. After we told him we were okay I had only 2 questions for him. Question #1 “Did I make the dunk before i fell?” He told me that i didn’t. So the other question i HAD to ask. Question #2 “Did it at least look cool when I did that?” I don’t know if he was just trying to be nice or if I did really look cool but he did tell us it looked pretty cool. So that made it ALL worth it!!!!! The life lesson i learned that day is “It is okay to do stupid things as long as you look cool doing them!!!!”

* To see the part of Along Came Polly I am talking about go to this website.