Here’s the thing about the south… You get invited to tons of suburban events which always leave me having some sort of “fish out of water experience”… The other night the wife says “We’re going to a cookout with some friends of the neighbors”. I like the couple that invited us. They’re good people. He works in IT, likes to drink a few beers, and went to a SEC school and is just a really nice guy. She’s just a nice girl, used to work at a bank, they have 2 kids. No big story here. The friends… Oh that’s the fun part…

The other couple consists of a woman who grew up in Pittsburgh with a foul mouth (shocker!) and a little sawed off dude that grew up here in the south. The little guy, the husband has a bad case of “little man’s syndrome” where he has to do anything he can to make up for the fact that he’s short. He works out CONSTANTLY, has some ridiculous tv set up in the basement that (no lie) consists of 8 televisions so he can watch all the games at once. We meet for the first time, and the wife prefaced the entire even by saying “Just don’t commit to ANYTHING with Clay (the short guy)…in fact, don’t even talk to him if you can avoid it”.

For the most part, I look as if I should have played college and possibly pro football. I am not a small guy: I am pretty tall, very wide shoulders and am north of 250lbs. This gets me into all sorts of shit. I get asked to move things, get things down from shelves, scare off undesirables, and worst of all, solicited for pick up games of football, softball, baseball and basketball. Clay, plays any sort of community sport he can: softball, flag football, soccer, all of them. All of the guys that show up at the sports bar in the matching outfits covered in red stains from sliding into home… He’s that guy. So he sees me, and RUSHES over to me and introduces himself. He sizes me up and then makes with the question: “Hey me and Trey are on a local softball team, you certainly played football and baseball as a kid, you wanna join?”

“Umm… No. I am not really into stick and ball sports.” Absolute shock. I could have smacked his wife in the face and gotten a better response from him. “What? You don’t play any contact sports… Are you..” “Nah man… I am not into those things. I mountain bike and that’s about it. I am a speed junkie. I destroyed both knees in college from some really nasty crashes. I’ve never played football or basketball, and I hate baseball”

So for the next hour or so, he just kinda sat back and gave me dirty looks until he asked me about my bike to see if he could get a rise out of me… “You got some sorta Huffy or Schwinn you take out on the trails?” The wife is now into it… “Um… No… His bike is pretty nasty… He had it custom built…” “Yeah it was about $4500, full suspension, disc brakes, all carbon fiber and aluminum… Its a beast…” Then she deals the CRUSHING blow: “Its set up just for Andrew. You couldn’t ride it, you’re too small, you probably couldn’t even get the suspension to move”

Silence from him for the rest of the night.