Transient Transplant

I’ve been looking to shake up my routine for a while now.  So when my friend in Seattle texted me asking if I wanted to join a skeeball team, the answer was obviously a yes.

While I feel overwhelmed by the amount of things on my plate at the moment, I also hate the feeling of falling into a routine when I know exactly what is going to happen–which is exactly where I’m at in life.

So why not take on something else?

Skeeball league, in a nutshell, involves me committing to only 6 Wednesdays, which seemed doable, all things considered.

Yes, I’d have to shuffle work around a bit to accommodate, and would be missing one of the Wednesdays because I would be in Indiana, but my competitive nature feeds off of things like this.  I wasn’t joining to make friends.  I was joining to kick ass and take names.

This was made abundantly clear when I, who am notoriously late to everything, worked a long shift and then took the bus to a bar called the Rabbit Hole.  I wish I could tell you in good faith it is the first time I’d been there, but that would be a lie.

I was not only the first one from my team there.  I was the first one of any skeeball participant.

The way I see it skeeball is the only sport I would have a chance at being good at anyways.  And chances were I would be terrible at it as well.

My strengths on the team are really being a shittalker to opposing teams.  That and blindly supporting my own team so we could conquer.

I quickly made friends with the bartender who sang to me, “I wanna know what love is” along with the music blaring from the speakers, and I responded in the only way a reasonable human would by stating with a straight face, “I want you to show me.”  He laughed as if he didn’t expect what I saw as an obvious joke, and proceeded to pour me an incredibly strong drink.

Finally the girl who ran the event showed up and started talking to me about the league, then asked me to watch her drink while she went to go grab t-shirts.

That’s when another girl came in and asked if I was on her team.  I told her I didn’t believe so as another two people entered the bar who didn’t know each other and were equally as intense and obnoxious as this girl.  Turns out they were all on the same team together and just meeting tonight.  I decided then and there that we were mortal enemies, and I was going to annihilate them when we were a match up in the tournament.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a thousand times.  I wasn’t here to make friends.  I was here to win.

So when they claimed they should have first dibs on t-shirt color and my team had already claimed the gray ones online, I sat quietly.  I did’t want to cause a confrontation if I didn’t need to, and they were fighting over the obnoxious colors like yellow and orange.

Then they landed on gray.  I texted my friend to hurry and get her ass there so I wasn’t the only asshole in the bar.  As they officially locked into that decision, I chimed in, “I don’t mean to be a bitch, but…”

Starting a statement that way clearly implied that I actually have no problem with that role.  At least they knew where I stood.

Long story short, our official team color is gray.

Finally as my teammates showed up, I was able to mosey to the bar to get one last drink before it started, when the guy behind me started asking about the skeeball league.  I fully vetted him to ensure that he wasn’t participating on an opposing team before explaining to him how we all got involved.

I explained it like it made us super cool.  He likely took it as “what kind of weirdo joins a skeeball league.”  I didn’t even care.

Needless to say, we dominated our first matchup.  I likely was very little help in this endeavor, but I’ll never hesitate to claim a position on the winning team.

I left the bar feeling overly confident with a few strong drinks in me and adrenaline from the win fueling me.  I looked at the clock, and knew I had to get back to my apartment so I had a chance of catching my plane the next day back to Indiana, where I was going to be a bridesmaid in my friend’s wedding.

I ran out to catch my Lyft, tripping and falling on the curb like a child, and having a nasty bloody knee the whole way home which I am confident the driver didn’t appreciate.  But I didn’t appreciate him watching me fall and not asking if I was ok.  So I guess we were even.

Besides, I’m sure he didn’t know he had a skeeball queen in his car anyways.