You Don’t Even Know Who I Am!

A Story About Fighting, Basketball, and Guilt.

We’ll start this story by pointing out a few levels of humor in this story… the small dude (5′ 7″ or so) picking fights with 2 - 6′ 6″ guys (who a friend pointed out, “weigh about 500 lbs combined”), yelling obsenities in the church (that I happen to attend), the infamous line that i chose as the title for this story, and last but not least… the guilt I felt for my part in this fiasco.

I always go to open gym on Wednesday nights and play basketball for a couple of hours. There are the occassional “street-ballers”, who make up for their lack of talent with their enormous mouths, but normally everyone that shows up is relatively harmless and just out to have a good time.

Well, on the night in question, we had a whole herd of jackasses show up who felt that they should talk sh$t, instead of playing basketball. Although annoying, I would normally ignore guys like this as my team pummelled them all night… but on this night, I got stuck with one of them on my team (for the sake of anonymity and because I don’t honestly know his name), I’ll call this guy Douchebag from here on out.

At first, Douchebag seemed to be tolerable. He forced some shots, couldn’t play defense… but both were managable and just slightly annoying.

After playing 4 or 5 games, where Douchebag’s man scored at least 1/2 of the oppositions points, he decides to confront my buddy (6′ 6″ – 220lbs) about a missed shot. They go back and forth: “6′ 6″ and can’t make a shot”, “your man has scored every time down the floor”… blah, blah, blah.

The normal sh#t talking in basketball comes and goes within a few trips up and down the court and you go on about business as usual… but Douchebag just wouldn’t let it go. So after several minutes of listening to this, I get in on the action and start talkin’ sh#t to him too (because he’s been the worst player on our team all night).

A few trips up and down the court go by with us talkin’ back and forth until I finally look over and politely tell him to “SHUT THE F#CK UP!!!”.

Of course, Douchebag doesn’t take kindly to this and proceeds to blurt out: “you don’t know me… you don’t even know who I am!”.

So funny!

Seriously?!

Are you such a badass that I should be worried about who you are?

So anyway, I look over at him (by this time we are a few feet from each other) and say: “I DON’T GIVE A F#CK WHO YOU ARE!!!”

About this time, another buddy that plays (and fellow church member) points out a fact that had escaped me during all of this… “we’re in a church guys!”

Well, being reminded of this fact, I snap back to my senses and realize that I am, in fact, in a church. A church that I attend with my wife and kids. A church gymnasium that is normally filled with innocent children, who are laughing and playing without even a hint of the kind of weird crap that goes on in this world.

So this leads us to the guilt…

• not due to the fighting ,because that can happen from time to time…
• not due to the screaming of obsenities, because that happens all the time…
• not due to getting into it with a little shrimpy dude, because a big mouth is a big mouth…
• not due to the fact that the guy was on my team, because fighting is normally reserved the opposing team…

The guilt I felt was due to the location of the altercation… a Church gymnasium!