A while ago I was cleaning out my wallet and I found a folded up piece of yellow notebook paper stuffed away in one of the back pockets. It was a Top 15 Memories list that my best friend and I created before I moved away. As I stumbled through it nearly six years later, the list seemed more like a comedy routine by Jay Leno. It’s hilarious. I was cracking up, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

Sports was our connection. We got together all the time to play basketball, wuffleball, football, pretty much any sport we could think of. And that’s where this list comes from.

1) “Grant beats Tim 102-98 in basketball after Tim had a 98-77 point lead.”

Yeah, that’s right. I blew a 21 point lead. How in the world did I let him score 25 unanswered points? All I had to do was score one stinking basket!

2) “Tim slams Bethesda kid’s (groin) with the basketball and everyone laughed, but the referee didn’t think it was funny.”

It’s not as bad as it sounds. I was just trying to save the ball from going out of bounds, so I jumped to save it, turned around in mid-air and chucked it off the nearest opposing player so we would get the ball back. The only problem is I didn’t have much time to aim, and let’s just say, it hit him where it counts. Almost everyone was cracking up. We were trying to hold back our smirks, but we couldn’t. It was just so funny.

3) “Franklin makes comeback while star’s on bench … star comes back in and scores on wrong hoop in fear of the stars Tim and Grant.”

This is pretty sad. Our team had a two-point lead with a few seconds remaining, and the other team’s superstar stole the ball and could’ve tied it up, but instead he scored on the wrong basket and sealed the win for us.

4) “Tim makes lucky, end-of-the-game-half-court shot to LOSE to West Highland”

I like to brag about how I made a half-court shot in a junior high basketball game. It’s one of the few bright spots of my basketball career. Unfortunately, it didn’t really matter, because we were down by eight points when I made it, so we lost anyways.

5)  “Tim trash talks the huge Temple kid, and then gets body slammed.”

We were playing against Temple and they brought in a high school player to fill in against us on their junior high team. He was huge. Way bigger, and way stronger than me. So naturally I took on the responsibility of trash talking him during the game … until he undercut my feet when I went up for a rebound in the second half. I slammed down on the court head-first and blacked out for a few seconds.

6) “Tim and Grant stuff little Temple kid two times from half-court.”

Our team had built a huge lead, and right before the buzzer a kid from the other team, who was about two feet shorter than both of us, tried to throw up a desperation shot from half-court. But we weren’t even going to let him have the satisfaction of getting his shot off. Grant stepped in and blocked his first attempt. Then, the kid grabbed the rebound and tried again. So I followed behind Grant and blocked his second attempt right before the buzzer. It looked embarrassing.