This is excerpted from a post on my Fantasy Football Message Board, the only place I write anything anymore, it would seem. In a few places I have added end-notes to explain what would otherwise be lost out-of-context.
Cletus [someone in the League: all names have been changed] has a friend named Ponyboy, whom I'm convinced Cletus keeps around for the sole contingency of one day needing someone to frame for Murder.
A few years ago Cletus fiendishly engineered the events of my life to lead to a point where I was forced to spend a large amount of time with Ponyboy, in what I can only figure was scientific experiment to see how far someone (me) could be pushhed before snapping and going on a 12-state killing spree.
But that's a story for another day. The reason Ponyboy sprang to mind vis a vis this debate(*1) is the one funny moment I ever experienced around Ponyboy (at least the one funny moment that didn't involve him getting hustled for $400 by a long-in-the-tooth stripper and then asking for a partial refund when he proved unable to achieve full tumescence, but I digress), involved his basketball career.
He told me that in Middle School he'd been on the basketball team and was a few rungs below a Cullen Brother(*2) on the Ability Ladder. (Don't try to picture this metaphorical ladder. M.C. Escher would drive himself mad trying to create it.)
Ponyboy's coach was one of those overbearing redfaced glory-of-war types (somewhere Bear is thinking, "I bet HE wouldn't care about a thousand dollars on the line in his fantasy league!"(*3)) who took the games very seriously. The coach had nothing but antipathy for his less-than-skilled players, and if you remember back to your Middle School Days (which in the case of Papa Akers might necessitate a rotogravure(*4)), you will recall that there were very few "athletes' who had developed much skill.
Consequently, the Coach loathed everyone but his starters (and even then, his feelings about his starting Center were akin to those of a man whose daughter is dating a line cook from Applebees, but "only until his band Redheaded Stepmonkey(*5) gets signed to a record deal which they totally will because they are so amazing, Daddy, you should hear them I bet you would really like them!"). Coach had little or no use for his second team, and would derisively call them "The Pylons" - a tribute to their inability to move on Defense (or Offense, or out of a huddle, for that matter); a clever name that would in no way stick to an unimpressionable hard-as-nails seventh grader.(*6)
Ponyboy, as he told me, was in the third-string, a motley bunch with the collective skil level considerably below even the second team.
One might imagine the self-esteem of a Girls Gone Wild Reunion Tour(*7), but Ponyboy confided this wasn't the case. The boys knew they were bad, and in all likelihood did not really want to play, and were only doing so to please a father, etc. And where the Coach needled the second team relentlessly, he at least had the action-plan that perhaps the second-stringers would be motivated by his mockery and become better players. But the coach saw the third string as so far beneath even the second-stringers that he wouldn't even spare them the energy of a withering glare. As far as the coach was concerned they didn't exist, which suited them just fine.
Ponyboy told me that the 3rd string had even developed a gallows humor cameraderie of sorts. The second string was so bad (according to the Coach) that they were The Pylons - what did that make the 3rd string? The name they develped for themselves was "The Pylons' Replacements."
As much as I hated that man, you gotta admit, that's pretty damn funny.
Notes
*1 I cut all that out; you couldn't possibly care about it; involved the morality of benching a player on Monday Night if you already had your week's match-up won and didn't want to risk negative points.
*2 Not the Vampire family, although now that I've renamed them for anonymity's sake, I wish we DID call them the Cullen Brothers
*3 This refers to the cut-our morality debate
*4 I was trying to use a reference that would jokingly call him old (he's the oldest guy in our league, being the commissioner's father), but I didn't do a great job there.
*5 Redheaded Stepmonkey would make a really great band name.
*6 This is sarcasm, in case you're totally lost by my random writing stylingz, or are Australian and genetically incapable of understanding it.
*7 If you can't figure out why the girls in Girls Gone Wild videos likely have low self-esteem then you're probably stupid. Send me a picture of yourself topless and I will help you feel smart and good about yourself. (Offer does not apply to dudes, Cletus.)
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