The Good Ol' Days

I'm For: People coming to Denver to visit, high school Ultimate studs going to Gonzaga, Baseball Beer and Americana, performing stand-up in the company talent show.

I'm Against: Doing my own laundry, struggling to find time to coach high school, my prolific use of the F-bomb in my last blog, and writing corporate friendly comedy.

This weekend I took in two games of baseball at Denver's finest facility COORS field. Considering the stadium is named after the company I advertise for, I was able to score some cheap tickets through work and take some buddies out to see some baseball. The series featured the Cubs which is not only my favorite team, but the best draw in the country bringing out almost as many Cubbies fans as Rockies fans. At times you couldn't tell which team made a play because the crowd reaction was split down the middle.

Although I am not a huge baseball fan and I don't follow the sport regularly, I do enjoy taking in the games live. For one tickets are affordable as far as sports go and it is a sport that you don't have to pay much attention to. You can spend as much time talking to your friend as watching the action and you can still follow the game. Because of these features I decided its pretty much a perfect place for one of your first dates. You can talk, but if things are not going well there is still a sport going on and beer to be drank. Normally I would cheer for the Cubs, but since they are terrible and traded all of the players I actually care about I was rooting for the Rockies as they still have an outside shot of making the playoffs. The Rockies won two out of the three games and like normal Rockies games there was a lot of scoring a few home runs and many good times. I had my beer, peanuts, hot dogs, singing, and baseball to get my fill of Americana for a while.

The baseball was fun but what was far more interesting was what happened between baseball games. I was planning to stay the night downtown, I didn't have a solid plan but between a few friends and my brother I figured I would find a place to pass out. I was pretty excited, up to this point I have not experienced too much of the Denver night life.

As soon as the game ended shit started to hit the fan, my good friend Justin was tired from watching the International (Golf Tournament) earlier in the day and went home to crash. Then Sean my other good buddy left to get some dinner with his girlfriends parents. So I was left with his three friends. Now the best way to describe these dudes were distant acquaintences. I knew all of them from high school. Two of them were twins who I was pretty sure dealt and did hard drugs in middle school. The other guy was in Band but I am pretty sure I never said a word to him before that night. They were alright guys, we played some darts but not dudes that I was too excited to hang with. So I decided to make an early exit and give my brother a call.

Except my brother was at his 10 year high school reunion. He told me I could pick up my keys from him at the bar. I made my way down, and at this point he had hyped me up so much as a comedian that I pretty much became center stage as soon as I walked into the place. I have no problem being the center of attention or crashing reunions. (This was my third on record after a stint of two reunions for Ferris High School in Spokane. One of which I successfully convinced a woman I was Kevin from Biology class.) These reunion folk were either very drunk or desperate because within minutes I had a few women hitting on me pretty hard. I am not saying this to brag either, it may surprise you but a tall drink of Perrier like myself isn't normally approached by women at the bars. But it was as if my brother had religously proclaimed I had a ten inch penis.

It was great being in a situation where I was known, but nobody really knew anything about me. I could completely be myself without any sterotypes or negative preconcieved judgements. At the end of the night my brother said the most popular girl from middle school legitimately wanted to sleep with me. Granted she was probably crazy as she listed her favorite high school memory as meeting her biological mother, but she was legitimately hot and wanted to have sex with me even though I was 7 years younger and still lived with my parents. This experience made me think about high school, and my chances of repeating this success at my 10 year reunion.

I have pretty mixed feelings about my high school experience. There were some aspects that made me absolutely miserable, and some things that were awesome and developed me into the personality I have today. The defining line between these two experiences were the people that surrounded me. In the experiences that I was miserable I was for the most part surrounded by people who judged me and were obsorbed with being cool or "the shit" to use the parlance of the times. For the most part these were the times that I was hanging out with players on the soccer team and other "semi-popular" crowds that I was loosely connected with. During these times I felt pressured to not be myself because people would unnecissarly cut me down call me gay or stupid for just trying to be stupid or lighthearted and have a good time. Granted I say some outrageous crap and I am willing to take my fair share of shit from people, but I took it constantly and it turned violent. People injured me and made me feel like shit. It was a situation where people expected me to fail rather than succeed, and as a result I took a mentality where I feared failure and did not strive or expect success.

I am not huge on quotes but there is one on a poster at my company by Henry David Thereau that reads "Humans are built for Success, not failure." That is an awesome mentality to have especially for sports, and at the time I didn't have it. A lot of it had to do with those people. Thank God I had other outlets that allowed me to be successful otherwise I would probably be in a complete hole today. For me those activities were honors classes, knowledge bowl, and band. Truth be told they are super geeky activities, but in those situations the people allowed me to have a personality. They didn't care if I laughed like a hyena, dressed like a colorblind 11 year old, or danced like a grandmother in heat. They laughed with me during all of the akward high school moments. Their welcoming mentality allowed me to thrive and become a badass amongst the nerds.

Highlands Ranch was a shitty place to be a nerd, one day we had an academic assembly to recognize the accomplishments of non-athletes. Instead of the pep band playing they had the orchestra perform. Instead of introducing the starting lineup for the football team they had knowledge bowl, DECA, and other clubs recognized. At the assembly, a kid threw a battery at someone in the orchestra while they were playing and fucked up her $5,ooo violen, had I known this happened I assure you I would have gone up and called that kid out and beaten his ass. The fact of the matter is in Highlands Ranch even if you were a part of these clubs you denied it because it was social suicide.

That's terrible, and it shouldn't be the case. The only time I truly let loose and had fun was when I was surrounded by people who cared more about who I was than what I did. I thrived because of knowledge bowl and pep band and to this day I do as much well rounded shit as possible because it keeps you balanced in your perspective on life.

So go ahead embrace your inner geek, I think thats the key to my happiness.