For 11 months I was a security guard. For 8 months since I've been a Truck Loader in a warehouse in the same place where I used to be a security guard. I see many of my old security guard friends every day. I have a friend from high school who is the head of security. He helped me get my security guard job there before they had made him head of security. This is the same friend that introduced me to basketball some 20 years ago. Gave me a passion for basketball by beating me so soundly every day in gym class that I became determined to someday be able to compete.

So. Lately my guard captain friend's been telling the security guards about how well he and I used to play when we would play together on the same team. T'is true. There were many years where he and I would team up and we had very complimentary skills and a good sense of what one another would do. So we would win a lot.

So. The young security guard kids don't believe him and there's been a lot of machismo sports talk in the old guard shack and it came down to them challenging him to a game and all that business. My friend and I vs. the kid who had been mouthing off the most and another guard. No! The kid didn't want to have two guards vs a guard and a loader, he knew a loader (because it was his cousin) so the game was going to be the guard captain and myself vs. a young security guard and one of my co-workers.

Now, in sports, there's really no determining how things are going to go before you play the game. I hadn't played much in the last year. Little bit here and there. Would being in better shape help? Would being rusty doom me to embarrassment? Was the young kid going to be much better than my friend? Was my coworker going to be better than me?

Okay. So. We were much better. Much. Like, my friend and I won 4 games to 0. And won each game fairly handily. And a lot of it was just me scoring all over everyone. There wasn't much excitement in the competition aspect of it...

The joy was in all of these crazy new things I could do. I have these basketball instincts, but who can say if not having executed certain things after a while causes you to loose them? But no! On the contrary. I would get the instinct to do things and I would try them and find that I could do even more. I could be in the air longer. Move faster. Aim better. I was really not expecting to be able to do things that were suddenly quite effortless.

Unfortunately I can't play too often because I can't risk injuring myself and not being able to work. But for a couple of really fun hours in the bright sunshine I started working on my tan and pushing my envelope and giving my friend bragging rights around the guard shack for a while.

Playing sports is fun.