X is for X

Deciding what to do with the letter X is like deciding what to do with a morbidly obese person. Your choices are limited because they simply can’t do much. I’ve mentioned in my stand up act before that I am convinced that the only reason X is in the alphabet is because it is kind of cool. And I stand by that assessment. For example, go ahead and cross your arms to make an X. Seriously, do it. See, cool.

Anyway, I also learned in seventh grade algebra that X can mean anything. After failing to decide between x-ray and xylophone, I decided to just pretend X means any unknown variable. In other words, I’m just going to start typing and hope good things come of it.

Here are five things I've learned in recent weeks.

1) I love the World Cup. I do. I could watch World Cup action nonstop for the rest of my life. If you watched the USA/Algeria game or the Ghana/Uruguay game you know that the World Cup can rival anything else in sports. In fact, I’m devastated that it only occurs once every four years. World Cup soccer in HD is nothing short of amazing, and I can’t believe that by the time I get to watch it again my toddler daughter will be in elementary school. Tragic.

2) I’m getting fat. My metabolism has apparently slowed down. Or something. All I know is that I have always been a medium shirt kind of guy. Now, I’m a large shirt kind of guy. It’s a sad (and awkward) day in the changing room when one realizes this; trust me. I didn’t used to have to cup my breasts when I ran down the stairs in order to prevent excessive bounce. Now I do. See, fat.

3) My wife will never love sports. For the first three years of our marriage, I was convinced that if she just watched more sports, she would eventually understand why they are so great. We’ve now completed the full cycle (NBA, NFL, MLB, Summer and Winter Olympics, all four major tournaments in tennis and golf, March Madness, College Football, and the World Cup) and she still doesn’t seem to care. Proof? Well, she told me she doesn’t. Plus, the other day she saw a headline that read “LeBron James and Dwyane Wade to Discuss Free Agency” and she said, “Wow, they’re really going to just discuss the principle of agency?”

4) Monkeys would be the best pets. My daughter recently started to give me big hugs around the neck. They instantly became my favorite thing ever. But in the back of my head, I know she’ll grow old and the perfect hugs will end. Right now she is just the right size to hug me while I hold her in my arms. She will hopefully always hug me, but the perfect size will only last a couple more years, tops. However, if I got a pet monkey (his name would be Charles The Candid), I could teach it to give the neck hug. And since I can get a monkey that won’t grow too big, I won’t ever have to give up the perfect hugs. Or I guess we could have another kid . . . hmmm.

5) Kobe Bryant is the luckiest athlete of all time. He was born the son of an NBA player. Out of high school he demanded he be traded to the Lakers, and got his wish. He played second fiddle to Shaq in three championships and inexplicably gets full credit for them now. He—well, you know—and then everyone collectively agreed to completely forget about it. He continuously acted selfishly on and off the court with his team, went so far as to demand a trade (ahem, all things LeBron never did), for the first time ever didn’t get what he wanted, and then got bailed out when the Lakers inexplicably got Pau Gasol for nothing. He pulled the all time biggest NBA Finals Game 7 choke job, and got an MVP award for it. And then, thanks to LeBron’s decision to have a one-hour special called “The Decision,” he became known as the loyal team player and a class act. If somebody can show me a luckier athlete, I will army crawl up a mountain in nothing but a swimming suit.