Liar's day
When I am left alone, and having nothing else to hold my attention, I tend to start conversations with myself. They flow as they would were there two or more people talking and all of them have different voices and opinions within my head. It's kinda bizarre, but I assume that everyone else does it too. Sometimes a simple thought process escalates into an all out scream-for-all that makes it incredibly difficult for me to think or do anything else. I dont really know why but this morning in the shower I started to think about cancer, which immediately led to Lance Armstrong, which in turn forced my thoughts to chemotherapy and then drug testing. Drug testing reminded me of the Greek olympians who tested postitive for doping and then I started thinking about what it must be like for the scrubs who go to the olympics without any chance of ever winning anything. The guy who lives out his olympic dream by being the guy to finish 3rd behind Michael Phelps and Thorpedo in the first qualifying heat - ending his competition almost before its begun. It isnt even the guy's fault. Although he is better than almost everyone in the world, he just isnt in the same league as the few other guys who dominate his particular sport.
I began wondering what sport I could potentially qualify in, knowing that I would never win a medal. Like if by some chance I was the second alternate on the US ping pong team or something. Then our top two guys test positive for ping-pong steroids and suddenly I am in, first round against the number one seed Koreans. It would be hilarious in how badly i would get worked. And I bet my parents would want to come all the way to Greece to see me in all my Olympic glory. And I would try to talk them out of it because there was no chance I could ever win the first round, let alone medal. And still my parents would come and despite the staggering odds against me would still be disappointed in my inevitable loss.
And so then starts the internal dialogue. How exactly it started I can't say. The voices started quiet, humoring myself at how funny it would be. After a minute or so it was all I could think about. There was nothing to do but let the thought process and dialogue run themselves out. For reasons I can't explain I began to envision myself in a job interview. The interviewer asks me a question, wants me to explain why there is a 2 year gap on my resume where I seemingly did nothing. And so I go into this long explanation (obviously completely made up) about how I finished 6th place in the 2000 Olympic games and those two years were devoted to training and competition. This obviously catches the interviewers attention and so I am obligated to explain in more detail, detail which i am making up on the fly. Shotgun shooting, I declare. Like in the outdoor games they sometimes show on espn. It's a relatively new sport to the olympics. The competition is fierce despite being widely unpublicized. I explain that I finished in sixth place, which is obviously a bit of a letdown since I didn't medal. But being sixth in the entire world is still pretty good, I concede. Besides, I didnt really have a chance anyway. Jesse Silver, from Texas, is the Tiger Woods of shotgun competition. He won the gold with an unprecedented perfect score, never before achieved in olympic competition. He has been a professional marksman since he was a kid, I was happy just to watch him shoot.
Well how did YOU get started in such an unusual sport? the interviewer asks. Oh... Boy Scouts I suppose. In summer camp one year when I was about 13 I learned to shoot clay targets at the rifle range. I thought it was pretty fun so when I got back home I had my parents find a local shooting range where I could go for my next birthday. A couple of my friends had a pizza party and then went to the range to try the various rifles. One of the gun club's pros watched me while I was doing some skeet shooting with a 14 gauge shotgun. He was apparantly impressed by my youth and talent and offered to teach me. I took lessons for the next few years and began entering competitions. Eventually, I made it to the Olympics...
This whole time I am still standing in the shower, losing track of time. After detailing my past I went into this ridiculous narrative about the nuances of marksman training. I explained how modern technology allows us to train much more efficiently and cheaply. We use modified versions of arcade shooters like House of the Dead and Police Trainer. They just replace the plastic guns with modified versions of the real rifles, complete with the realistic kickback of each shot. I couldn't stop. I just kept running with the story, seeing how far I could take it. Eventually I forced myself out of the shower and off to work, but what the hell...
--OK, so... so... sometimes I lie. I mean, I'm weird, man. About random stuff too, I don't even know why I do it. It's like... it's like a tick, I mean sometimes I hear myself say something and think, "Wow, that wasn't even remotely true."
I began wondering what sport I could potentially qualify in, knowing that I would never win a medal. Like if by some chance I was the second alternate on the US ping pong team or something. Then our top two guys test positive for ping-pong steroids and suddenly I am in, first round against the number one seed Koreans. It would be hilarious in how badly i would get worked. And I bet my parents would want to come all the way to Greece to see me in all my Olympic glory. And I would try to talk them out of it because there was no chance I could ever win the first round, let alone medal. And still my parents would come and despite the staggering odds against me would still be disappointed in my inevitable loss.
And so then starts the internal dialogue. How exactly it started I can't say. The voices started quiet, humoring myself at how funny it would be. After a minute or so it was all I could think about. There was nothing to do but let the thought process and dialogue run themselves out. For reasons I can't explain I began to envision myself in a job interview. The interviewer asks me a question, wants me to explain why there is a 2 year gap on my resume where I seemingly did nothing. And so I go into this long explanation (obviously completely made up) about how I finished 6th place in the 2000 Olympic games and those two years were devoted to training and competition. This obviously catches the interviewers attention and so I am obligated to explain in more detail, detail which i am making up on the fly. Shotgun shooting, I declare. Like in the outdoor games they sometimes show on espn. It's a relatively new sport to the olympics. The competition is fierce despite being widely unpublicized. I explain that I finished in sixth place, which is obviously a bit of a letdown since I didn't medal. But being sixth in the entire world is still pretty good, I concede. Besides, I didnt really have a chance anyway. Jesse Silver, from Texas, is the Tiger Woods of shotgun competition. He won the gold with an unprecedented perfect score, never before achieved in olympic competition. He has been a professional marksman since he was a kid, I was happy just to watch him shoot.
Well how did YOU get started in such an unusual sport? the interviewer asks. Oh... Boy Scouts I suppose. In summer camp one year when I was about 13 I learned to shoot clay targets at the rifle range. I thought it was pretty fun so when I got back home I had my parents find a local shooting range where I could go for my next birthday. A couple of my friends had a pizza party and then went to the range to try the various rifles. One of the gun club's pros watched me while I was doing some skeet shooting with a 14 gauge shotgun. He was apparantly impressed by my youth and talent and offered to teach me. I took lessons for the next few years and began entering competitions. Eventually, I made it to the Olympics...
This whole time I am still standing in the shower, losing track of time. After detailing my past I went into this ridiculous narrative about the nuances of marksman training. I explained how modern technology allows us to train much more efficiently and cheaply. We use modified versions of arcade shooters like House of the Dead and Police Trainer. They just replace the plastic guns with modified versions of the real rifles, complete with the realistic kickback of each shot. I couldn't stop. I just kept running with the story, seeing how far I could take it. Eventually I forced myself out of the shower and off to work, but what the hell...
--OK, so... so... sometimes I lie. I mean, I'm weird, man. About random stuff too, I don't even know why I do it. It's like... it's like a tick, I mean sometimes I hear myself say something and think, "Wow, that wasn't even remotely true."