A little light dinner conversation. The longer two humans know and the more comfortable they are with one another, the easier it is for them to ignore each other at their most vulnerable, take each other for granted, and interact indecently, impolitely, and dismissively. With relational entitlement comes a permit to prick-off. Would we were all able to treat those we know well with the decency we afford strangers. Hue-Man Sigh-Kol-O-Gee!

January 23, 2014

Well, here's this one. Kind of the same theme as the last one: crossing out of your youth, and the strange social interactions that occur with the generation behind you, of which you are no longer a part.

I played adult kickball for a couple of years during my late-twenties into my early-thirties. Teams were all over the board, but you got to play some college-aged kids, you know, late teens, early-twenties. Sometimes uncanny situations would arise.

You see, I have this ability of dubitable worth: I can drink twelve-to-sixteen ounces of beer faster than anyone I’ve met. (And I roll with several problem drinkers.) I'm not fucking around here. In undergrad, this was a laudable badge. A decade later, it is but a grotesque totem. But I still fucking do it, so screw you buddy!

So a decade post-undergrad, I met the equivalent of my undergrad self on the kickball field nearly every game. Sometimes twice. You see, close calls were subject to 'shotgun challenges' -- each team puts forth their best drinking pawn, and they have at it -- whoever slams a full beer faster wins. Each game allowed for two shotgun challenges, one by each team. The throw out at the plate becomes a score, or vice versa, if only your team's chugger can out-drink the other guy. And boy did I win every single one of these challenges. Almost as good as this guy, another call-back to my own college days.

So some faux-hawked cut-off-wearer with the thick, undefined musculature that attends a simultaneous lifestyle of both heavy weight lifting *and* heavy drinking steps up, and sees the old thirt-ski-year-old man in the tie-dye. "You got this bro, you got this!" -- the chorus of his undergrad buddies, surrounding the spectacle, still young enough to enjoy life. And then the old man trounces him. Badly. Embarrassingly. The old man drinks that toxic, mass-produced domestic swill faster than the undergrad dude can score an Adderall on his state-school campus.

The run counts. Score it.

In fact, soon after my playing days, a new rule was instituted in the adult kickball league: a team cannot use the same chugger twice in the same game. Call it the 'Lambert Rule,' if you will. Fugg yeah.