Wednesday, February 18, 2004
The Coolest Thing I've Ever Said
When I was in college, I was on the baseball team. I've never been a jock, or one who could be mistaken for a jock, but I've always loved baseball, and played all through high school. Fortunately, my college was a Division III school, and therefore the standards were low enough that I was able to join the team. I was your typical no-hit second baseman. I was a pretty good fielder, but really couldn't hit well at all. I spent a lot of time on the bench.
I was on the team for three years, though, and I like to think that I earned the respect of my teammates through my dedication, if not through my skill. Most of the guys on the team were nice, solid, friendly guys. A few were elitist jock jerks, but that's to be expected. At any rate, I was friendly with almost all of them, and close with a small number of them. By my last year on the team, we were all decently tight.
A little backstory is necessary here. At the beginning of my senior year, I began dating a girl, who we'll just call "Guadalupe". Many of you reading this blog know the end of that relationship, but that's another story for another time, and I'll urge you to put it out of your mind for now. When I met Guadalupe, it was through a mutual friend, and we started off just as friends. At the time we met, she was engaged (although that clearly meant less to her than it would to most other people), and I had a serious girlfriend. As Guadalupe and I got to know each other, we became closer friends. As we got closer and closer (although never crossing any inappropriate lines), she became more distant from her fiance. Eventually, they broke up. After a few months, I broke up with my girlfriend as well, and then started dating Guadalupe shortly thereafter. Both breakups were in some ways related to the developing friendship between Guadalupe and I, but at the same time, there were plenty of other reasons as well.
As it turns out, Guadalupe knew quite a few guys on the baseball team. Basically, many of them were in the same fraternity, and one of Guadalupe's sorority sisters was dating one of their brothers, so Guadalupe had visited their house a couple of times. They knew she was engaged, and then knew she had broken off the engagement. When I started dating her, they started calling me the "Homewrecker", mostly as a term of endearment. There's a comment in the comments section that refers to this. I found it amusing and had no problem playing up to it. It was fun to go up to bat with the shouts of "Home-wreck-ahhh!" coming from the bench. (I went to school in Boston, hence the "-ahhh!")
And that's where the coolest thing I've ever said comes in. Maybe I've said cooler things, but none that I remember. My legions of blog fans will have to remind me if there's anything that tops this. At any rate, the ball team was traveling in a van to an away game. Somehow, the topic of my relationship with Guadalupe came up. I told them an abbreviated story of how it had started. One of the guys said, "So, she broke up with her fiance so she could start going out with you?"
Wanting to emphasize that I had still been dating someone at the time she broke up with her fiance, and that we hadn't started dating each other immediately, I said, "No, no, no. She broke up with him for the chance to go out with me."
That earned me quite a few laughs. One guy said, "That's the coolest thing you've ever said. You should not say anything ever again." (A bit of a dig, I suppose, but at the time, he sounded awestruck. Really.) Another guy used that as his senior quote in the yearbook, attributing it to "Dave 'Homewrecker' Berman". And that's the coolest thing I've ever said. So far.
I was on the team for three years, though, and I like to think that I earned the respect of my teammates through my dedication, if not through my skill. Most of the guys on the team were nice, solid, friendly guys. A few were elitist jock jerks, but that's to be expected. At any rate, I was friendly with almost all of them, and close with a small number of them. By my last year on the team, we were all decently tight.
A little backstory is necessary here. At the beginning of my senior year, I began dating a girl, who we'll just call "Guadalupe". Many of you reading this blog know the end of that relationship, but that's another story for another time, and I'll urge you to put it out of your mind for now. When I met Guadalupe, it was through a mutual friend, and we started off just as friends. At the time we met, she was engaged (although that clearly meant less to her than it would to most other people), and I had a serious girlfriend. As Guadalupe and I got to know each other, we became closer friends. As we got closer and closer (although never crossing any inappropriate lines), she became more distant from her fiance. Eventually, they broke up. After a few months, I broke up with my girlfriend as well, and then started dating Guadalupe shortly thereafter. Both breakups were in some ways related to the developing friendship between Guadalupe and I, but at the same time, there were plenty of other reasons as well.
As it turns out, Guadalupe knew quite a few guys on the baseball team. Basically, many of them were in the same fraternity, and one of Guadalupe's sorority sisters was dating one of their brothers, so Guadalupe had visited their house a couple of times. They knew she was engaged, and then knew she had broken off the engagement. When I started dating her, they started calling me the "Homewrecker", mostly as a term of endearment. There's a comment in the comments section that refers to this. I found it amusing and had no problem playing up to it. It was fun to go up to bat with the shouts of "Home-wreck-ahhh!" coming from the bench. (I went to school in Boston, hence the "-ahhh!")
And that's where the coolest thing I've ever said comes in. Maybe I've said cooler things, but none that I remember. My legions of blog fans will have to remind me if there's anything that tops this. At any rate, the ball team was traveling in a van to an away game. Somehow, the topic of my relationship with Guadalupe came up. I told them an abbreviated story of how it had started. One of the guys said, "So, she broke up with her fiance so she could start going out with you?"
Wanting to emphasize that I had still been dating someone at the time she broke up with her fiance, and that we hadn't started dating each other immediately, I said, "No, no, no. She broke up with him for the chance to go out with me."
That earned me quite a few laughs. One guy said, "That's the coolest thing you've ever said. You should not say anything ever again." (A bit of a dig, I suppose, but at the time, he sounded awestruck. Really.) Another guy used that as his senior quote in the yearbook, attributing it to "Dave 'Homewrecker' Berman". And that's the coolest thing I've ever said. So far.
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