Death

"I have lost the will to live, the problem is it keeps coming back when I get hungry" --Matt Bray

Once upon a time at swim practice, where so many of my quotes are born, we did a really difficult workout. After it was all over I probably tried to pull myself out of the pool and laid on the deck. Thoroughly exhausted I didn't want to move. That's when the quote came. You see I did feel like dying, because it probably felt better. Losing the will to live tends to be a frequent occurrence after swim/polo practice. But every time, without fail, it comes back. Often it comes back because I get hungry. I realize that I'm hungry and that is even worse than all the pain I'm going through, I'd suddenly want to live again so that I could eat. At least I think that's something like what I meant when I said the quote, I don't really remember exactly what I did mean.

I've felt like this the last few days. Tuesday was the first day of polo practice and my coach's new favorite workout/punishment is lunges. Lunges are very painful in large amounts like my coach makes us do. He makes us go around the pool, 150+ yards of misery. Let me describe how this feels for those of you who have never had this experience. We start off at one corner and go around. The first 25 yards are alright. After that it all goes downhill. By 50 yards the legs start to burn and don't want to bend any more. By 75 they are burning so bad it feels like it is impossible to continue, but you have to. By 100 yards your legs start to shut down and feel like fire. Then you have to go 50 more. When all 150 yards are finished you stand up and your thighs feel like dull, metal knives that have been held in a fire for about ten minutes are stabbing your legs all over and it is almost impossible to walk because if you move your legs at all it only makes it worse. So now sitting down sounds like a great idea and you do. You sit down and in order to do so you have to bend your legs again it makes it hurt worse, then you sit down and the thigh muscles seize up and feel like they are pulling your knees into your hips all the while still feeling like those heated knives are stabbing you. This description does not even do it justice. Then to make it even better, every time you try to stand up or sit down for the next 3 days you make grandpa noises and/or whimper because it hurts so bad. To cap it all off you have to waddle around because of the pain.

Scars

“Rule number 1: don’t spray your coach with his own water bottles; bad things happen.” --The Chard and Matt Bray

This last weekend was state swim. It was way fun and our team did pretty good. It reminded me of this quote that occurred at state polo last year. Richard and I were sitting on a bench watching the championship game. Kirt, our coach was standing in front of us off to the side and Richard was babysitting Kirt's water bottle. Why? I don't know. It was a weird bottle, it was more of a bag with a cap like a regular water bottle.

Just as a side note, Richard was playing with the bag that you put inside the bucket for ice at the hotel earlier that day. The ice had all melted so he had a bag of water. He managed to spill it all over the room and get some of our stuff wet. He did the same thing again in our same room, in the same day. So you can see how this is going to go.

He discovered that you could spray the water pretty far from this water bottle/bag. He filled it up several times and took great delight in spraying across the deck. Being Richard he got the brilliant idea to spray Kirt, and being Richard, he followed through with this plan. Kirt turned around ran toward Richard. Richard looked for an escape route, but there was none. Over me was his best option, he clawed me frantically trying to get away but his plan failed. Kirt got a hold of him and showed him who's boss. I discovered my arms had been cut up from Richard trying to escape. I still have scars on my right arm to this day. The quote is self explanatory here.

But Richard is not the only person to leave a scar on my right arm from a polo experience. Our good friend Carri left a nice little scar on my forearm one day too. We were at practice one day and scrimmaging. I was guarding Carri and she happened to have the ball. I had my arm up to block, but I thought I could hit the ball out of her hand. Somehow her head appeared where I originally thought the ball was. I managed to knock out one of her brackets from her braces and received a scar from the impact. I really enjoy teasing her about that one.

Complications

"If you didn't worry about what other people think when you talk, life would be so much more simple." --Martin Bradwards

This quote came along on a Monday. How do I know this? It was referring to Saturday and Matt was not there, thus making it a Monday.

The Friday before was region swim. As you may remember from this post, we had a lot of fun laughing. It was one of the greatest days ever.

The next day I went on a date. I did not (and still don't really) know the kid very well. His name is Joseph Potter and he is really funny. I had no idea what to talk to him about or anything. So I recounted my night with Matt and Richard. I mean, when you laugh so hard and spend so much time with two people, everything reminds you of them.

Long story short, I felt a little guilty for bringing up Matt and Richard while I was on this date.

On Monday, I informed Richard that he complicates my life by being so funny. Then the quote was born.

And it is true in everything.