Mick that reminded me of some luck I had once. My first two years of high school we had open gym until 10 PM every night except Sundays and we would sometimes have some very good games in there, some of the best I've ever played.

One night I was playing in there, and I forget exactly what happened but there was a looseball and it was traveling back towards half court and there was still some people in the backcourt. Well I was scrambling for the ball and some douchebag was running downcourt and they KICKED the ball right back at me, right into my nuts. I went down in a heap and I landed with the ball under my chest which knocked the wind out of me. The guy (I knew him, he was a clown but didn't mean bad) was SOOOO scared, he was the only person on the court not laughing. He was bigger then me but not the fighting type at all. Neither was I but you'd never know by how I played, especially then when I was a bit over competitive and out of control. I was pissed but I got over it.

The very next night I was playing 1 on 1 with my friend Mike Dailey who was great to play 1 on 1 with because he never once in his life beat me at 1 on 1 but provided a great challenge everytime. Those games were always fun for me. Well 2 courts over they had a 5 on 5 going, I guess a ball rolled into there court and without looking someone KICKED a ball away. It went sailing in the air and you could guess in what direction. I was at the top of the key and all I could hear was HEADS and the very split second after I heard that, I had just enough time to whip my head around and before I could even look it caught me right in the ear. Unbelievable, that one was more comedy then anything but I wasn't knocked down this time, I gave chase right away haha I knew the person who kicked it they were actually playing with me the night before but I was pissed. He was laughing but I wasn't and I cornered him and starting punching his arm and he started laughing which I was a bit too but I got mad because that hurt. He kept laughing and I started hitting harder and then I punched him in the ear, right on the side of his head and pretty hard too. Right after I punched him in the ear one of the basketball coaches who ran the open gym pulled me off (he thought we were joking) and told me to cut it out or he would throw us out. So then I felt kind of bad for punching the kid in the ear for what was an accident and he wasn't laughing at the moment just called me stupid and nothing ever came of it.

One time I was playing, this was just recently, and these two asians were matched up and one of them kept swiping at the ball. Not really committing to it, just trying to break up rythym, I do it a lot it's very effective kind of like a jab to the shoulder in boxing. One time he did it and the kid with the ball swatted his hand away. The next "swipe" was a slap right to the ball handlers face. I thought they were going to fight but they didn't. I kept trying to talk to the guy who did the slap and he would say like 1 word without even looking at me, just a very mean person I guess who didn't appreciate his hand getting swatted away.

Some other things. I struck out in slow pitch softball playing with a bunch of people 3 grades older then me, some of whom were college baseball players. It was very embarrassing especially considering I wanted to talk baseball with everyone but there I was just sucking at actually playing it.