Monday, May 19, 2014

The Real Beast Mode

My wife is a beast. This is probably a term that most women wouldn’t take to very kindly…especially my wife, who admittedly battled weight problems through high school (and endured the very nickname the beast from her brothers in a not-so-nice meaning) before becoming her presently very fit self. But now she is a beast in the very best sense of the word.

A little context here: the name of this blog is kind of a self-deprecating look at my own athletic prowess. If you came to watch me play on a basketball court or football field of Average Joes, I might come across as the best player out there on that particular day. But that’s with “Average Joes.” If you did this with Krissy and replaced Joes with Josephines, she would not might come across as the best player…she would be the best player by light years. If she were the author of this blog, “B-Court All-Star” wouldn’t be an apt title; “A-Court Superstar” would be much more on point.

When healthy, I am a good all-around athlete. Good is the operative word. Relative to other girls, my wife is in the top 0.01%...I don’t really know the odds; she might be better than that even. I am admittedly totally biased, but it’s not just hyperbole. She was a 3 sport varsity athlete in high school (having never played before, she just picked up tennis because she didn’t have anything to play in the spring…picked up). She was a junior college All-American softball player in high school, and a Division I Team MVP in her senior season in the same sport. She passed on an opportunity to play professionally overseas after her college career ended.

To say she is a natural athlete would be the understatement of the century. I’m a terrible ice skater, but Krissy had never been ice skating before. We went a few years ago for her 1st time with my sister and my dad (a seasoned skater who grew up playing pick-up ice hockey on his backyard pond). She fell once within her 1st 5 minutes on the ice…after that she was skating around the rink 90 mph backwards right on my old man’s heals.

Since crossing over from the collegiate ranks to the B-Court with me, she definitely has distinguished herself. Wherever I have played pickup basketball over the years, she has always played along with me. And she doesn’t simply play…she is one of the best players on the court, and that is as the only girl playing with a bunch of dudes.

In our coed touch football league, she started out as one of the all-around best girls in the league. For the past 4 seasons, she’s operated as our full-time quarterback. She’s the only girl that I know of who has done that even for 1 season…did I mention that she was pregnant for 2 of those seasons? Not just like conceived-halfway-through-the-season pregnant…like, super-pregnant…like played-our-last-game-in-November-and-gave-birth-in-January (or May-and-due-in-September) pregnant. Did I mention we’ve made the playoffs in 3 of those 4 seasons – 2 of them the pregnant variety – as well?

So, this Saturday when we lost our playoff game, Krissy was super-pissed the entire car ride home. But all I could think of was how improbably it is to do what she has done. I mean, she should have an article written about her in the paper or something…but since The Baltimore Sun hasn’t come calling, this is probably the best I can do. To my wife, Krissy: the beauty and the beast.

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