Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Despite the sweltering 90 plus degree temperatures yesterday, I decided to take my towel, my water and my basketball to the hot outdoor courts for a good workout. My plan was to stay out there for about an hour, do some individual drills to break a sweat, and then come home. While I was out there, there were two kids who were making themselves quite at home off in a corner. One kid was about 6"4 and looked to be around 17, and the other kid was about 6"0 , and he looked to be the same age. They should have been on the court with me, but instead they were finding joy in partaking in quite a different activity.

These guys were huddled up in the corner of the basketball court smoking the sticky green and I was not a happy camper at all. First of all, if I am trying to get a hard workout in, there is no way in the world I can keep doing my thing with THAT smell hovering over me like an umbrella. Second, as much as I was enjoying my time playing with myself(that's what she said), I could have used the competition on the court. And thirdly, there was a significant police presence both on foot and in cars, and I didn't want to be guilty by association..which brought up another moral dilemma.

Part of me wanted to go over there and tell the kids to roll out and go do their business elsewhere, because I was trying to work out. I can't say that would have been the smartest thing to do but it crossed my mind. Then yet another part of my mind wanted to tell them to go somewhere else because the police were all around us like the Matrix, but I had this fear that while I was down there talking to them, the police would jump out like this was The Wire, and we'd all get arrested. As unlikely as that story may seem to you, stranger things have been happening in DC lately. And then I wondered if I just ignored them, and then the police caught them, would they remember my face, and come back and hunt me down, No Country for Old Men style

Luckily for me, someone else came to shoot basketball up at the court, and they were shooting at a basket closer to the smokers. Problem solved. 10 minutes later, the two guys emerged from their cloud of purple haze, and they asked me and the other guy who was out there, if we wanted to play 2 on 2. Now at first I'm thinking to myself, how the hell are they going to play high..and then I realized certain people in a certain professional league have been doing it for years, so I quickly got rid of that thought. Anyway we played, the guy I was playing with was terrible and we lost a close game. Still, it was an interesting 90 minutes. I was still disappointed those high school kids were just getting high at 6pm on a Monday. I suppose I should accept the fact that these are the times we're living in, but I couldn't quite get comfortable with that. Then again, I didn't say anything either, so how bothered was I really?

On a side note, the other guy who was shooting around, had some G2 low calorie water that he was drinking after our game was over. I wanted to tell him that drink has lots of high fructose corn syrup and that my girlfriend, her sister, and other studies I have read, have told me that is bad for you, and that he should drink water. But I didn't want to lose the street cred I have worked so hard to attain, so I let him go down on his own.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

add vitamin water to the list too...i'm always a debbie downer when it comes to that..

Neil MacLean said...

The last time I played ball high was in college, and I left my dorm room open with the keys on the bed. I don't think I played well either.

Kawana Cohen-Hopkins said...

You should have said something to those young brothers. I think thats part of our problem, we don't address issues with children (cause they are still children) like they are our own kids, like a village. If any of us had done something like that back in the day, the older person would have kicked our asses or told our parents, and we all turned out fine because of it.

Anonymous said...

"Say man, that drink there ... man it has high fructose corn syrup. Yeah dawg, I wouldn't touch it. My girlfriend told me so."

Yeah, glad you kept it moving.

Miss. Lady said...

Man why didn't you tell them kids that they are frying their brain? Then got out a belt and commence to whippin. LOL!

No seriously that would of been an opportunity to teach a lesson. Shoot, you could have told them after the lousy game they played that they would have played better if they weren't sky high.

£ said...

lol @ the ridiculousness of even labeling water "low calorie". water by virtue of what it is has no calores. Added flavor and sugar- no matter how minute - alters it, and its no longer water. Its become "drink".

That being said i will tear up a vitamin water - energy flavor. Yumz.

I'm mad that those young boys didn't have anything better to do. I wouldn't have said anything, but i would have been sighing loudly and coughing obnoxiously to make a passive aggresive point.