Top Fives (memories edition, part two)
Due to the ridiculous amount of time it actually takes to type up this thing, I only delivered three sets of memories. Let's finish off with the final two lists today.
Top Five Work Memories
1. Josh Kendall's Labor Day Party, 1999 - This sucker lasted something like 38 hours and featured the 'Greatest Playstation NCAA Football Game Known To Man' with Marc rallying from 21 points down with under two minutes to play - including an 80-plus-yard interception return for a touchdown.
2. Tiger Woods winning the Masters, completing the ‘Tiger Slam,’ 2001 – It was cool enough this was the first Masters I got to cover, but aside from that … I had a conversation with Rick Reilly.
3. Winning an Associated Press Sports Editors Feature Writing Award, 2001 – I was the second of three Athens Banner-Herald sportswriters to get this recognition in three consecutive years – joining both Marc and C Trent. I won it for this story about the comeback of former UGA golfer Reilley Rankin, though the archived story is missing the final few paragraphs which are, you know, essential to wrapping that whole thing up.
4. Recreating Friends, 2005 – One of my jobs at the museum is to help prepare the PowerPoint presentations for some of the lectures, meetings, etc. Becky and I were counting how long each image should be up on the screen, and we figured it would be easier if one person called out how long and the other wrote it down. So Becky begins to call out the numbers – ‘4, 5, 7, 4, 4, 5, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7 …’ – and, after a minute or two of this, we descend into laughter. The whole thing was creepily like the Friends where Monica tells Chandler about women. It took us about 45 minutes and four failed runs through the numbers before we agreed just one person should do both tasks.
5. The Punch That Never Came, 2001(?) – My first boss is a diabetic, and seeing how my mother is one as well, I’ve become well-versed in the signs of an insulin reaction, low blood sugar, etc. During a meeting of the Georgia Sportswriters Association at the paper, it was clear my boss descended into pretty bad one. C Trent and I were sitting next to each other and were genuinely concerned considering he was blatantly not responding to questions asked to him. Now, a little background here – C Trent did not care for the boss in the slightest. Still, a man in dire medical need always calls for your attention. The problem was, the second we broke for lunch, the boss is up and gone … and I mean gone. We scour the building looking for him, fearing he either wandered downtown or tried to drive away. I get a phone call from C Trent, who says he found him in the garage, and I get downstairs to find C Trent passing bottle after bottle of orange juice his way. The boss comes to and after everything is squared away, C Trent tells me the boss threw a punch at him – an incredibly awkward, slow and clumsy punch – when he first approached him. Thus leading to “‘and I thought about it and said to myself, ‘if there’s ever a chance, this is it.’” Still, C Trent held the punch and escorted him to juice.
Top Five Work Memories
1. Josh Kendall's Labor Day Party, 1999 - This sucker lasted something like 38 hours and featured the 'Greatest Playstation NCAA Football Game Known To Man' with Marc rallying from 21 points down with under two minutes to play - including an 80-plus-yard interception return for a touchdown.
2. Tiger Woods winning the Masters, completing the ‘Tiger Slam,’ 2001 – It was cool enough this was the first Masters I got to cover, but aside from that … I had a conversation with Rick Reilly.
3. Winning an Associated Press Sports Editors Feature Writing Award, 2001 – I was the second of three Athens Banner-Herald sportswriters to get this recognition in three consecutive years – joining both Marc and C Trent. I won it for this story about the comeback of former UGA golfer Reilley Rankin, though the archived story is missing the final few paragraphs which are, you know, essential to wrapping that whole thing up.
4. Recreating Friends, 2005 – One of my jobs at the museum is to help prepare the PowerPoint presentations for some of the lectures, meetings, etc. Becky and I were counting how long each image should be up on the screen, and we figured it would be easier if one person called out how long and the other wrote it down. So Becky begins to call out the numbers – ‘4, 5, 7, 4, 4, 5, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7 …’ – and, after a minute or two of this, we descend into laughter. The whole thing was creepily like the Friends where Monica tells Chandler about women. It took us about 45 minutes and four failed runs through the numbers before we agreed just one person should do both tasks.
5. The Punch That Never Came, 2001(?) – My first boss is a diabetic, and seeing how my mother is one as well, I’ve become well-versed in the signs of an insulin reaction, low blood sugar, etc. During a meeting of the Georgia Sportswriters Association at the paper, it was clear my boss descended into pretty bad one. C Trent and I were sitting next to each other and were genuinely concerned considering he was blatantly not responding to questions asked to him. Now, a little background here – C Trent did not care for the boss in the slightest. Still, a man in dire medical need always calls for your attention. The problem was, the second we broke for lunch, the boss is up and gone … and I mean gone. We scour the building looking for him, fearing he either wandered downtown or tried to drive away. I get a phone call from C Trent, who says he found him in the garage, and I get downstairs to find C Trent passing bottle after bottle of orange juice his way. The boss comes to and after everything is squared away, C Trent tells me the boss threw a punch at him – an incredibly awkward, slow and clumsy punch – when he first approached him. Thus leading to “‘and I thought about it and said to myself, ‘if there’s ever a chance, this is it.’” Still, C Trent held the punch and escorted him to juice.
posted by Jmac at 7:06 AM
3 Comments:
I think the fact that we tried to count four or five times is what really makes it so ridiculous.
JMac, you left out the best part of the story ... in CTrent's version - at least the one he told me - Zippy made a punching sound as he made the awkward attempt, similar to a kid making an explosion noise when he throws a dirt bomb.
Can you imagine?
That's the part of the story I love the best, too. "Pssshewwwww," or something similar.
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