In the zone.

I don't know if you remember several months ago a post I wrote about untapped talents....in it I expressed that I thought one of my untapped talents may just be basketball. I think I was right.

Our stake has basketball games on Thursday nights and I have wanted to go the last little while. Unfortunately I do not venture very far outside of my house unless accompanied by Ralphie, and she was hesitant to go. She didn't want other members on the team to feel bad because she is so good. Understandable.

Anyway my good friend Gretchen sent out a plea asking me to consider coming to the game on Thursday (yesterday). It was the perfect excuse to go. I was excited.

Though my knowledge of playing basketball is limited I went into the game with three excellent strategies.

1- Cough like crazy so that if I had the ball and touched it no one else would want to get near it for fear of infection (see, this is how sneaky I am, the cough is real but it is just a cough---no virus or infection, I wouldn't want anyone to really get sick, that's probably some sort of technical foul or something.)

2- Whenever someone not on my team has the ball wave my arms like crazy and do a little annoying scream or whoop/holler.

3-Pass the ball to Gretchen. Do not pass the ball to Katie. (These were the only two recognizable faces of people there---Gretchen was on my team, Katie was not).

With this line of defense it was hard to imagine anyone scoring on me. And it must have worked because I noticed soon after I got in that I was being guarded by the opposing teams strongest player. That'sssss riggggghhhhht.

My team kept saying something to me about staying in my "zone" whatever that is supposed to mean. I am guessing it meant my mental state of awareness or something, which I don't know why they kept yelling that to me while I was trying to attack the person with the ball--obviously I was in my "zone". See I asked Blaine about this later and he says they meant they wanted me to stay in a certain part of the court, which I think is a bunch of hogwash because really what is going to happen in my section of the court if the ball is elsewhere? Nothing. Go where the ball goes, that's my philosophy. Well....go where the ball goes but if you notice Katie standing alone and someone else has the ball maybe go and try to psych her out with your wild girl screaming. I had to do some of that too, or else someone would throw her the ball and she would pull a Michael Jordan. That Katie, she's an animal.

The good news is that I scored a basket. The bad news is that I scored it by doing a granny shot. Hey, it's still two points no matter how you look at it. I couldn't help it. I didn't know what to do. Someone passed me the ball, I looked for Gretchen (the only person on the court who I actually could recognize as a team member), briefly considered yelling "if you are on my team raise your hand!" but then realized that even though it was church ball I couldn't be sure if people would be honest. Having found all of my options for getting rid of the ball unworkable and being way too far away to shoot like a grownup I did what any reasonable logic thinking ten-year-old would do and took the granny shot. I had weighed the cost; if I missed then surely social suicide would be my doom. Luckily though, I made it.

All things considered I think I played well. I wanted to leave on a high note though so as soon as I scored my granny shot I was outta there. Until next week....of course.