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How To Win $40 By Exploiting Your Lack Of Athletic Ability
Like most gaming nerds, I've never exactly been a natural athlete. In three years of playing intramural basketball, I think I scored a total of five points. I thought I'd give wrestling a shot in high school and was promptly injured and unable to continue. Hell, I have a bag of ice on my knee as I type this, and I haven't even participated in so much as a brisk walk in weeks. So yeah, long story short, I'm no LeBron James (I'd imagine even Kevin James could beat me soundly in one-on-one).
A couple of years ago, I ran into an issue with my friend Dom. We were playing Wii Tennis at my apartment when he became overly exuberant and accidentally heaved the remote into the side of my oven. The remote broke, so naturally I requested $40 from him. Problem is...Dom is cheap. The $40 wouldn't come easy.
Cut to a few weeks down the line, and we're significantly intoxicated at a bar in Lawrence, Kansas. We were joking about my lack of athletic ability, and tried to imagine what a hypothetical one-on-one contest in basketball would be like (he's really good and plays all the time). Some at the table predicted that Dom would win without me scoring so much as a single point. Others thought that I could pull off a lucky shot and grab the upset. As the conversation continued, it started becoming less hypothetical and more "let's do this tomorrow and put money on the line." After many beers, we somehow arrived at this conclusion – we'd play to 15 by ones and twos, and if I scored a single shot, I win the $40 he owes me. If he beats me 15 - 0, I owe him $7. I don't remember exactly how we arrived at those numbers, but that's what we settled on.
We arrived at the University of Kansas rec center the next morning, notably hung over. The money was given to our mutual friend Ben, who would score the contest impartially and award the cash to the winner. Below is what followed, and I apologize in advance for the image quality and general shakiness of the footage (it was shot on a still camera by my friend's girlfriend, who was apparently very excited about what she was watching).
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