What's Your Lowlight Reel Look Like?

I also have considered the cheetoh chicken recipe. Also considered crushed cheez-its.

I have one more you can add to your list. ;-)

LOWLIGHTS:

- I too have a “punched in the gut and cried” story. Mine was because I was the annoying kid who tried to call pass interference in backyard football games. It was not by a girl, but let’s just say I was a bit older than 4th grade.

- I took ice skating lessons as a kid at the Ice Chalet. During the “recital” or whatever it was called, the button on my pants came undone and I spent the rest of the “routine” skillfully but ultimately unsuccessfully trying to keep my pants from falling down.

- In cross country in high school, I got myself and every single runner behind me lost and we ended up running almost five miles instead of three.

- In 2007 I had a kidney stone. I threw up in the parsonage, my neighbor’s cadillac, the back of an ambulance (because you get dropped off at the rescue squad station when you throw up in someone’s cadillac), and the lobby of the Wythe County Community Hospital.

- I wore an orange power T hoodie through the Fayette Mall in Lexington last week. I don’t recommend this.

HIGHLIGHTS:

- Every day, man. Every day.

Lowlights:

*Began my hate affair with Baseball when I learned that I had absolutely zero baseball talent: Little League. This was impressed upon me by the dog doo my team mates placed in ball cap while I was at bat…striking out…..again…..

*Once changed all the grades on my Report Card to passing…by overwriting my teachers blue ink with red…you can guess the results.

*Introduced girlfriend to best friend. Became former girlfriend and best friend in under 48 hours.

*Stole former befriends new girlfriend. Revenge is sweet but friendships can’t be rebuilt.

*Moved to New York

*Moved to Seattle

*Once called the restaurant “Olive Garden” as “The Olive Patch”. At a embassy. During a party. While in uniform.

*Managed to completely confuse coworkers by passing between Gaelic, Irish accent, to extreme southern Tennessee/North Georgia drawl in a matter of minutes while intoxicated. Led to psyche eval per my commander who thought I had lost my mind.

*Once drove down interstate from State Line, Idaho to Spokane, WA. drunk, puking out door, without swerving, while my tower partner looked on in amusement while smoking a cigarette.

*Divorced.

Highlights:

*After graduating high school with a good solid D average I’ve finished college with a 3.17.

*Worked and or served in 32 states, 16 countries, and 5 combat zones

*Once performed “Freebird” for High School Christmas show with my band.

*Followed that performance the next year by performing “Margaritaville”

*Took Runner up 1st in a AIDS Benefit contest

*Took 1st place for State of NY in Country Star Competition try outs.

*Used to swap live DC Power lines. Without safety gear. On a Aluminum Ladder. For a living. Earned me the nickname “Psycho” for the next three years in Telecom circles.

*Managed to crawl over a mile to rendezvous point after completely destroying right hip and breaking upper femur assembly due to chute collapse while landing. Unit gave me small plaque dedicated to pain tolerance as my career ended.

*Selected for 1,250 ft tower construction that was featured in prominent wireless magazine. My office has almost always had the best view….

*Remarried with awesome kiddo and wife who tolerates my adventures

*Won drinking contest in Williamsville, NY.

*Outdrank two Aussies and a Brit at conclusion of Operation Southern Watch.

*My CSM once told me that “As an American Citizen there are 2 million people who want to kill you every day of your life. As an American Soldier there are an additional 5 million more who want to kill you in many creative ways. Every day is a victory against the SOB’s.”

Because I talk too much. So including them means I’d be typing for the next several hours, and I seriously need to write a paper at some point or another.

LOWLIGHTS:

*I’m sure nobody else really noticed this, but it still sticks in my mind, so I include it. When I was in 4th grade, I would still go up to the front of church for the children’s message. Until one day when the time in the service happened, I walked up to the front, and they told me it was only for the children’s choice, and I had to walk back alone while the whole congregation stared at me (this last part is probably not true, but that’s how I remember it). This somehow sticks into my mind worse than:

*Was at the boardwalk playing mini-golf in elementary school, and something didn’t quite agree with me, and the first restroom I made it to was closed for cleaning, and. . . that didn’t end well.

*Despite being the nerdy kid in a class full of cutups, I was the only one to: (a) get an elementary school paper in the “potential problem child” file in the principal’s office, (b) get kicked out of a lab for dangerous behavior, or © make fun of the administrator to his face in front of the entire school. That last one was kinda funny though and might not be a lowlight.

*12th grade senior trip, train from London to Paris. I ate something that didn’t agree with me and realized too late that train bathrooms don’t have toilet paper. I thought it was kinda gross and I’d have to throw some undies away. Until we got to Paris and a classmate pointed out that the backside of my khakis weren’t so khaki. In front of:

*Had a thing for the same girl from 5th to 12th grade. Finally asked her to our senior banquet thing. She said she’d get back to me. Still waiting.

*Played on my college’s DII soccer team for a month. It’s a massive time-eater, and you can only socialize with your teammates. I didn’t get along with my teammates at all. That sucked.

*First time trying to ski a double-black, my ski popped off when I was stopping to rest. I lost balance when trying to click it back in, and lost my other ski and both poles while tumbling a couple hundred yards down the mountain. Right below the lift.

*Proposed to a girl a little bit too soon. She said yes. She had been acting a little off, and cited trouble at home, so I bought her a plane ticket from Spokane to Boston so we could see each other and detox a bit. The day after she got in, I found out she was cheating on me. Oh yeah, that was also the day of the 2010 Tennessee/Alabama game.

*Got suckered into overpaying for a whole group of graduate students going camping because I thought we had to pay before leaving and the leader of the group had been hoping to leave first and then negotiate with a bit more leverage. This was my first meeting with a new group of graduate students that I’ll be spending the next six years with. Oh yeah, and on the way back the next day, I crashed my professor’s car. I am not making this up. I’m also looking for excuses to skip this trip next year.

HIGHLIGHTS:

*Let’s just stick academic highlights in a central location: high school valedictorian (4.0 GPA), 1520 SAT (800 math), 35 ACT (36 reading), college valedictorian (4.0, summa cum laude), 1450 GRE (800 math), accepted into a worldwide top ten PhD program.

*Oh, I also got a math paper co-published. That was kinda cool.

*Parks and rec soccer team went on a three-year, 45-0 run. Three championships, and our closest game the third year was a comeback from a 2-0 deficit to win 7-3.

*Hit a game-winning inside the park homerun in the bottom of the 8th (we played six-innings) in instructional league baseball. This with my foot swollen so bad I could barely get it in my shoe, after I had stepped on a honeybee that morning.

*Man-marked and shut down a professional (minor league) center mid in a soccer tournament just outside of Copenhagen.

*Got on my college’s soccer team. This is a highlight and a lowlight.

*I wasn’t the only player to quit in the first two years. The rest (who you’ll recall I didn’t get along with) joined the same intramural team, who were two-time defending champions. My intramural team beat them 3-0 in the championship, with me anchoring the defense.

*Went to the first two rounds of March Madness in Providence during Tennessee’s Elite Eight year. Saw UT/SDSU, UT/Ohio, and the upsets by Ohio over Georgetown and St. Mary’s over Villanova

*I bought my first house this summer. And because I’m still single, my sister (just graduated college) moved into the second bedroom. For some people, that might be a lowlight, but I get along well with my family. It’s fun times.

*Defended Lane Kiffin to my extended family for a whole season. One of them is now committed to play for him at Southern Cal.

/piddle

I may have, hypothetically, taken a police car for a joyride when I was 18.
I was conned into taking a position in a band because nobody else would, it sucked and I put forth as little effort as possible. Some freaking British invasion meets pop-rock crap.
I played World of Warcraft long enough to hit level 60 once.
I managed a sub 2.0 GPA in my first year of college… at a community college.
After stupidly choosing glasses that didn’t cover my entire field of vision(Lennon glasses) I batted .185 in a baseball season.
I really suck at basketball.
I once had relations with a girl who a friend had a crush on, in that friend’s house.
I was sent to the principal’s office EVERY SINGLE DAY in the last half of 2nd grade… I also punched said principal in the face in front of the entire class when he tried to pick me up by my collar. He was a real arsehat.
I probably owe about .2 points of my college GPA to my ability to bs my way into a better grade. That, and my lack of shame when it comes to grades and scholly $$$.

I’ll do the highlights when I have more time.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Heath-Evans-Nick-Saban-once-stepped-over-a-conv?urn=nfl-wp13450

I’ve only read Joel’s so far, but this looks like some entertaining reading for later tonight. I may just come up with my own list.

First I want to ask something. Am I a bad person because the only thing on Joel’s list of lowlights that made me laugh out loud was the one about hitting his 4-year-old in the head with a whiffleball bat?

*Halloween this year went to a party and made the mistake of drinking too much hunch punch with Everclear (Not a good idea ladies and gentlemen, still not really sure how I walked home that night) Needless to say the rest of that night was spent in the restroom, so I was told.

*In Preschool during recess I had an extremely urgent lower bowel movement that didn’t wait for me to get off of the playground. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone so it stayed like that for a while.

*Trying out for my first baseball team in 3rd grade. The coach was hitting pop ups. The pop up went straight into the lights, I lost track of it the ball then smacked me in the mouth and jarred a couple baby teeth loose. Baseball savant I am not.

*Successfully friend zoned by back to back girls.

*Tearing my ACL senior year of high school soccer, which was the one year we had a shot to win state. Also effectively losing any scholarships to play soccer.

For sheer awesomeness

Only black out I had was when i was stationed at Hunter Airfield. We started at a small bar off post on Friday night.

I woke up on Sunday in a pair of swim trunks I hadn’t owned before in a hotel room with 1 person I knew and 6 that I didn’t on the shore in Savannah, GA.

I made it a point to slow my roll after that experience…..

(Crawls into corner sobbing, while singing “Let’s have a real good time”)

using my crystal ball I forsee the Kansas AD fired in 3 years.

I was on the swim team.
Late to my next heat, I went to pull off my towel…
When you’re in a hurry and already awkward, well you can probably guess what happens next.
Everything came off with it.
Mind you, this was in front of the opposing girls team.

Lowlights:

Kindergarten: Running from a stupid boy in the hall at school, I was looking back to see how close he was, only to turnaround into the cinder block wall. (broken nose #1 of 3 and I lost my first tooth.

I had a boy hair cut AND I chose to have a rat tail for a small period of time. My milkshake did not bring the boys to the yard during those years.

During the Olympics in ‘96, I stayed with my cousins in Florence, AL. My cousin Kathryn and I were convinced we were Kerri Strugg and Shannon Miller, and decided to “vault” over the couch. I attempted the vault with all the confidence I would clear the coffee table, too, and landed on my neck on the table and peed my pants from fear of paralysis. Verdict was in: I’m not Kerri Strugg.

Jr. High. My best friend was a pitcher and her dad was the coach, I did not play softball, I was a cheerleader. He bet me I couldn’t hit her fastball. I hit it alright. Line drive into his face. He had to have surgery, and when it happened she and I panicked and ran down the street.

In high school, a friend of mine had her boyfriend cheat on her. In retaliation, we poured sardine juice in the A/C vent intake thingy, duct taped a dead possum to the muffler exhaust, and placed bologna on the paint. If you don’t know what bologna does to paint when it gets hot…it peels the paint off.

I played WoW for a period where I didn’t eat, shower, or talk to anyone for WEEKS. I slept very little.

During the Hobnail boot game, I was in the seats that the recruits normally sit…right below the away UGA peeps. When we scored the go-ahead TD, I almost got into a fight with the Dawgs, and then well, they scored literally in front of my seats. He came to celebrate toward the stands and I punched his helmet. God, that sucked and it hurt.

Attending the 2007 SEC championship game, where we lost to Ryan (I’m gonna win four Heismans while I’m at LSU, but actually end up transferring to Jacksonville State where I will never be heard from again) Perilloux……

My roommate in college and I decided that Seagram’s gin and watermelon Kool-aid was an awesome idea.

Projectile Slimer vomit suggests otherwise. Disgusting.

But still feel like I’m missing a bunch of things. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

Lowlights

*In pre school, I was sitting on a metal seesaw type thing. The guy on the other side had this block of wood that he was trying to break in half. He threw it at the bar in the middle where it predictably bounced up and hit me in the forehead. I needed stitches.

*I tried to tell my mother in 1st grade that I was too sick to go to school, but she had a strict fever/vomiting policy for staying home. Since I was had neither of those things, I went to school, where I promptly vomited all over the back of the classroom (this story repeated 2 years later during TCAPs).

*This story would get very long…but with my parents out of town, I jumped on my neighbor’s trampoline unsupervised (which I wasn’t allowed to do), hurt my knee (way past the time I was supposed to be home), claimed I was too hurt to go to school (despite there being crutches in the house), and inevitably got in a ton of trouble when it all came to light.

*In middle school, I had this weird proclivity for asking girls “out” over e-mail…I sent one girl an e-mail written all in wingdings that included a fair amount of guilt trips. Her older sister found out about and let me have it.

*At my 8th grade formal at Webb, I opted for a grand send off before going to Bearden for high school. I performed a strip tease to the “Grease Lightning” mega mashup and embarrassed my date.

*After a guy found out that I’d been doing a LOT of flirting with his girlfriend, he told me I could “just have her.” In spite of that ringing endorsement for my candidacy, i did NOT get the girl.

*When I went to college, my HS girlfriend broke up with me and started dating someone else. I was 19, she was 18…he was 30.

*When said GF broke up with me, I got way beyond intoxicated and spent the majority of the night intermittently regurgitating, exchanging “low fives” under the stall with my equally drunk friend, and laying on the totally sanitary bathroom floor.

*I willingly went to Vanderbilt sporting events for 4 years.

Highlights

What can I say…I’m a lucky guy. I’ve got a great girl, a great family, a great job, and great friends. I made good grades. I was a talented saxophonist once upon a time. No complaints here :)

http://www.rockytoptalk.com/2011/12/8/2622715/vols-place-second-most-players-on-all-sec-freshman-team

- beat my 2nd grade teacher in a speed reading competition in front of entire class. May have gotten standing ovation…not sure. This was actually more a “speed talking” competition as I’m fairly certain that I committed the page or two long passage to memory. And then I banked on the fact that I talk real fast (and I still talk fast, but as a little kid I talked REAL fast….even went to speech therapy for a year in (I think) 4th grade to try to learn to talk slower. The speech therapist was basically like “hey, kidbourbon’s mom, the kid doesn’t have a speech issue, he just talks real fast, so tell him to slow down. Run along now.”). But, whatever, it totally looked awesome to the rest of the second graders.

- “accelerated reader” winner for elementary school in 3rd grade. The more I look back on this, it is quite possibly the most impressive thing I’ve ever done in my life. Basically how this worked was, you read a book and then went and took a little test on a computer to prove that you read the book. Each book was worth a given number of points depending on its length and difficulty. My elementary school was K-6. I was in 3rd grade. I didn’t just win this competition — that, again, let me emphasize, included 4th, 5th, and 6th graders — I CRUSHED it. And then I never won it again. But, to be clear, I don’t even remember if they had this competition in the subsequent years. So either (a) they didn’t have the competition in the subsequent years or (b) after I won it in 3rd grade, I essentially said “F#*k it….i’m out”. I’ll go with the latter, because it sounds cooler.

- 6th grade county pull-up champion

- 8th grade school spelling bee champion

- 3-time SAE boxing tournament champion. Boxing turned out to be UNQUESTIONABLY my most natural sport and a sport that I actually do believe I could have gone pro in had I completely dedicated myself to it. But I was smart enough to realize that there isn’t any money in sub-welterweight boxing. And I am a little fella.

- HS tennis state champion (WV Double-A, so maybe not as impressive as it sounds. To put it in perspective I couldn’t have made the team at UT. Granted, they got 2nd in the NCAAs one year when I was in school. But I very likely couldn’t have made the team at any SEC school. My serve was a weak link, but that’s sort of a gamebreaking weak link.)

-Won a writing award in HS for a short piece entitled “A second in the life of….”. The title initially had my name in it, but the people judging the writing award weren’t supposed to know who had written the pieces they were judging, so I had to take it out. Anyway, it was only one page, but I still consider it one of the best things I’ve ever written. Arguably even better than the Lane Kiffin / Lil Wayne post I wrote for RTT…but not nearly as funny.

- ski instructor at local ski resort my last two years of HS. Was pretty good at skiing when I started, and got real real good those last two years of HS. Have never done any competitive ski racing, but looking back in hindsight, I probably should have at least given it a shot. I consider myself to be legitimately silly nasty disgusting on a pair of sticks. I’m definitely better than you.

- I snowboard as well, and take some pride in being able to “go both ways” on the mountain. I usually snowboard on the East coast (because, and this sounds ridiculously arrogant, I really do see East coast ski resorts as being pretty much beneath my level of skiing), and bust out the sticks in the Rocky Mountains.

- Magna() Cum Laude in EE at UTK
- Went to law school in evening at top 20 law school while working an actual real full-time job and then a different actual real — and way more demanding — full time job.()(**)

- Passed bar zam after studying like a madman for 6 weeks.

- Passed second bar zam three years later after studying for like 9 days. (****)

- have been told twice — and 8 years apart from one another — that I exuded sex appeal. This is so far and away the best compliment I’ve ever received that it’s not even possible for me to articulate the distance between this compliment and what might qualify as second best.(*)

- Senior superlatives: best eyes and cutest(******).
- Had such a good year (hypothetically) betting on college football in 2010 that my friends started calling me “The Free Money Kid”.(#)

LOWLIGHTS
(*) Should have unquestionably been Summa based on grades going into final year, but came to realization that I didn’t want to be an Engineer and the manifestation of that realization was me doing little more than going through the motions that last year.

(**) Unquestionably burned myself out in the process.

(*)Also, my law school grades ended up being mediocre. Horrendous first year due to me not yet being able to balance work/school. Two really good years when I figured it out. Horrendous final year because of new gig and new inability to balance work school.

(****) Still unclear what the practical result of this will be.

(*) Probably something like “you’re kinda cute”

(******) The “cutest” was one is probably more like a lowlight considering that “best looking” was also a superlative. So, I think “cutest” might have meant something to the effect of “best looking in a non-threatening sort of way”. But then the girl that got “cutest” was legitimately hot and was, in my humble opinion, hotter than the girl who got best looking. Also, the girl that got best looking is now like 800 pounds. The guy that got best looking is actually a really cool dude that I still keep in touch with.

(#) Didn’t have such a great year this year. Most of the 2010 winnings were given right back. I mean, they would have been if gambling were legal in this country.

- Got cheated on by a girl I really really liked. Didn’t immediately break up with her.

- Subsequently cheated on a girl that really really liked me. Did so with girl who previously cheated on me. I’d really like to take that one back.

- spent a night in the clink after getting a little too inebriated and boisterous. Then spent another night in the clink after getting a little too inebriated and boisterous.

- am pretty clearly overqualified for my present job. Am going through one of those “okay, kidbourbon, what is that you wanna do with this life of yours” phases. And I’m doing this despite the fact that I’m 31 years old and thus should have probably figured that out by now.

- got hit in the head by a line drive foul ball at a minor league baseball game when I was maybe 13ish. Worst of all was that I was there with my dad, and he insisted that we go to the emergency room to get my head checked out, and so I had to walk out of there while everybody was looking at me and pointing.

- whenever I got sick as a little kid, I would have terrible nightmares and would sleep walk. Back before I started actively hating baseball, I used to love the St. Louis Cardinals, and so one time when I had the flu as a youngster my parents were awaken by noises and came downstairs to find me sleepwalking and throwing all the magnets off the fridge while repeating over and over “they threw out Ozzie Smith”.

My middle brother, who is now one of my favorite people in the whole world, was really really mean to me when I was a little kid (I am the youngest and brothers are 6 and 9 years older than me). On more than one occasion his picking on me would result in me getting into a blind rage and attempting to assault him with knives and other household weapons. Not clear how much damage I could have done as a 6-7 year old, but I was - at the very least — able to throw a dart hard enough to make it stick into his chest. Yes, I threw a dart and stuck it in my brother’s chest.

-snuck into the players lounge at the 1997 US Open and had an “encounter” with Anna Kournikova. This should be a highlight, except the “encounter” was me sitting in a chair next to a couch that she was laying on and being unable to come up with anything to say for 5 or so uncomfortable minutes. I had a huge huge huge huge huge crush on Anna Kournikova. She was the hottest girl in the entire world, and so me freezing up is probably understandable given that i was 17, not famous, and didn’t really have any game. But it’s also quite regrettable.

- will have to think of more lowlights. Certainly there are many more.

Highlight: In high school, spent 2 days puking with the flu during Christmas break and then went out the 2nd night and had a triple double in holiday basketball tournament (26 pts, 14 asst, 10 reb). Wouldn’t have been able to do that if not for holidays……not at school that day=no play in game that night.

Low/high: Voted the Drunkest Man in Sicily at deployment “over the hump” party.

Low/high: Same night, took crewmember’s girlfriend back to my room for the night while he was on his way back to the desert with another crew who was down 1 ordie.

1) Once chewed out by junior HS basketball coach for confusing the words “ironic” and “erotic.” Try talking your way out of that one.
2) Had a crush on an 18-year-old. At 13. Gave her flowers on a youth group trip to Gatlinburg. She gave them back.
3) Got fired from my first job at the local miniature golf course/gameroom. Mostly because I was 15 years old and not very bright.
4) I am the king of mistaking identities. Too many to name.
5) Nearly got pissed on by a college friend who thought my bed looked an awful lot like the urinal.
6) Got busted for calling my Freshman HS English teacher a “bitch.” She overheard. Why she didn’t eviscerate me on the spot I’ll never know.
7) The mullet. Wanted to look like Ronnie Van Zant, ended up looking like Billy Ray Cyrus.
8) Spent most of the last three years unemployed since the store I managed in closed. But I start a new job later this month.
9) Asked another girl to the prom, junior year, by making her one of those “Create-A-Card” greeting cards at the mall. She said no, but her college boyfriend decided he was too good to go to a high school prom. She still had no trouble finding another date.
10) Showing up for a court appearance in a civil suit, only to find that my attorney had not filed the proper paperwork, so I got stuck with a $13000 judgement for a debt my parents owed. Fortunately negotiated a settlement but learned never to cosign for anything ever again.

1) Went to Belmont. Didn’t have to pay for it. Awesome.
2) Junior year of college, went to Mardi Gras on a whim. Didn’t sleep for 3 days. Best weekend ever.
3) Met Reggie White when I was 7 years old…I played t-ball on a team coached by Dennis Harrison, who at the time was a DE for the Eagles. Reggie came to practice a couple of times. Not bad.
4) Also met Michael Jordan when he was in Nashville, playing minor league ball for Birmingham. My HS best friend’s father was a professor at Vanderbilt, but he had taught at UNC previously and Jordan was one of his students.
5) Had a 27-point, 22-rebound game in 8th grade. I was already 6’ and the other team’s tallest player was about 5’8". I felt like Shaq that day.
6) Went to the prom as a Freshman in HS…with a junior who looked a lot like Mayim Bialik. I was the only freshman guy invited to prom that year. Pimpin’.
7) Made an “Al Dillard 3” in a game in HS. They don’t guard you from 30 feet.