When I was up in Boston over the weekend, we had this company bbq and, after all of the eating and drinking and such, a bunch of us menfolk played a touch football game. (The next time someone accuses me of being a terrorist, I'm going to point them to the sentence above.)
Sports at a company outing are always a little dangerous for me. Do I want to try hard and win, thus proving my dominance and, in the process, establishing my reputation as the office violent lunatic? Or do I want to take it easy out there and lose, thus displaying my carefree attitude while also showing everyone that I don't care about anything in the world, even something as pure and true as team touch football?
Luckily for me, some of the other guys set the tone for this game right away. We were lining up to get started and I looked over at the guy next to me; he had a beer in his hand and a cigar in his mouth. Maybe you could get away with that on defense, but we were on offense and this guy was running pass routes. Maybe it was a little tricky to catch with all of that, but at the same time, who wants to tackle the glass-wielding dude with fire in his mouth?
My point here is that I had a good time, and I found work-related sporting to be much more relaxed when I'm playing with very diverse competitors. Maybe I'm advocating for some football affirmative action here. (Clarence Thomas just unsubscribed from my RSS feed in disgust.)
Alright, the Fourth of July is on Friday and I'm now having a hard time remembering back when I used to enjoy four day weeks. I know this happened at some point, probably just a few years ago. I'd go in to work, shout, "Four day work week!", and high five the janitor. Now, I'm a fully-fledged adult and whenever I'm deprived of a work day, I wake up in a cold sweat, screaming, "AGHGHHGHGG WHERE ARE THE REPORTS??!!!"
Nevertheless, I'm going to eat some hot dogs and light some fireworks. This is still America, damn it.
Posted by Cody at July 2, 2008 9:36 PM