Ha. You probably think I’m referring to myself in this situation don’t you? No. Or at least not in this first part of the story. As some of us volunteers are young, we like to party. Is that being ageist? Is ageist a word? I do not have a squiggly red line underneath it so I’m going to assume yes. Every once in a while humans like to imbibe some and sometimes they imbibe a bit too much and it affects them the next day. This isn’t some anti drinking post. I’ve never seen anyone skip work or have their work compromised due to alcohol while I’ve been here. I’m more commenting on how the universe finds a way to specifically screw with a person during this hangover experience. Let’s say today for example, a certain volunteer may have felt a bit under the weather. (This really isn’t about me! Sure, I have my own story about my own hangover but I’ll get to that later, okay?) What happens during this day? We get recruited to play “basketball for 20 minutes.” Which apparently means run laps, and do athletic drills, and then play a very long game of Keep Away which morphed into competitive team handball. I was fine with it. Because (here’s my story), I got to redeem myself from playing lackadaisical soccer when I thought I was going to throw up. I have no idea how I got involved in an hour long soccer game when I was in my own state of duress but that happened. I didn’t do too well in that soccer game. Today though? I felt like an Olympian. That might be a bit strong. It was just nice to actually feel athletic and that my presence actually swang the outcome of the game. Put me in a pickup game of basketball and I’m probably only good for fouling a player and I might mess up that too. Put me in a game where I’m 6’3″ and I’m playing with 11 and 12 year olds and I’m like Lebron vs. a high school junior varsity team. It felt good man. It even feels better when the competition you’re facing is undergoing their own personal hell. Do I look like a tomato now? Yes. I didn’t expect to be outside for so long dominating the competition and leaving everyone in my dust. Is my nose burning as I type this? Sure. It’s burning with the fire of the heart of a champion. Did I rip my pants? No. Thank you for asking. Maybe hangovers don’t suck. Maybe hangovers are just creations meant to make one person feel athletically superior for a day. When I dealt with mine, the other volunteer had a field day in that soccer game. He didn’t know he’d be dealing with a Floridian Messi if I was at full strength. Wow. Keep drinking people, keep drinking to make us less athletically inclined folks have our day in the spotlight. Sure, one could argue that it’s probably more to do with playing with people half my age and a foot or two shorter than me. They’d probably win that argument. Except I’m not here to argue. I’m here to state opinions. And in this case, my opinions are facts because that is in fact my opinion. So it goes.