Channeling the Sloth

The heat is sweltering. The overcast sky has produced just enough rain to dampen the ground and make the air so humid that if you jump at the right time you might find yourself suspended above the earth and unable to move. Your legs stick together if you even think of touching them to one another, and you are sweating from places that, by all accounts, should never leak liquid (like our fingernails and teeth). It’s the perfect day for a tennis match.

Saturday was the big tennis match against our arch rivals Mayfield. We had been preparing for this match for over a month and testing new strategies to best our opponents. (Note: Calling them daisy-pants and telling them to lick your yardballs does not…I repeat…does not assure victory) We tested methods of confidence building, like trying to pick out theme music to play at deafening volumes as we arrived at the courts, and unity building, like drinking at the bar after a practice/game/conversation/coherent thought. But what we found to work the best was the naming of power animals to channel.

The naming of power animals has two schools of thought when it comes to the proper way of choosing the specific animal that you will channel. One method is contributed to the Native Americans, and involves the imbibing of copious amounts of peyote, or mushrooms if you were hard up, and sitting in a tent sweating for hours or even days until you had a vision in which you were helped by an animal spirit guide to come to a personal truth. Some Native Americans had to go through this ordeal several times before they discovered their power animal, but I’m sure that it had nothing to due with the smoking of copious amounts of peyote. This method had mixed results, where you might have one young brave with the name of Standing Bear and one young brave with the name of Pooping Rabbit. Thus the shift to the second method, which is surprisingly similar in many ways to the first.

The second method of naming a power animal comes from drunkus coedicus...commonly known as the college student. The rules to naming a power animal in college is simple.
1) Someone else has to give you your power animal.
2) You both have to be drunk.

That’s it, it’s that simple. This method, though has had serious consequences in the past and should not be taken lightly. (Historians are looking into the notion that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was not caused by a protest against Emancipation, but rather the fact that while at the theatre Mr. Lincoln had had a few drinks and jokingly referred to John Booth as Pooping Rabbit and the name kind of stuck. Mr. Booth was probably not happy)

The guys on the tennis team all decided that we needed power animals that we could channel in moments of great need and distress on the courts. (We were drinking when we came up with this plan) The idea was that when we were tired and down we could look deep inside ourselves and find the courage, strength, and determination of an individual power animal to help give us that extra bit of needed motivation to hit the next winning shot. With his quick reflexes, Lankford was dubbed The Mongoose. With his dexterity and speed, Woods was named The Emus. With his boundless energy and ability to leap great heights, Chris was named The Kangaroo. With his keen eye and ability to track down a wayward ball, Atchison was dubbed The Falcon. So what power animal did I get? Surely a cobra, or lion, or some other cool animal that would inspire me to pull off great feats when I was down. No…you've probably already guessed it by now. Yup, I’m The Sloth.

Now, before you call my teammates cruel and heartless bastards you should get to know them first…then call them cruel and heartless bastards. You see I am a pretty big guy, and a smoker, and I have developed a way to play tennis that uses as little movement as possible so as to conserve as much energy and air as possible. Thus I have harnessed the ability to “move without moving.” Let me explain. When a ball is hit toward you most good tennis players would take the necessary steps towards hitting it back, like taking a step forward or back in order to position oneself for the maximum degree of a successful return. Not me. Through meditation and self discipline I have harnessed the ability to stand in the same spot and hit the ball back with all the power and accuracy that one might expect from hitting a wad of dough with a wiffle ball bat. Okay, I’m exaggerating…it’s more like hitting a bowling ball with a salami.

Actually the naming of my power animal was none of my teammates’ doing. I am a pretty decent player, but I do use the art of “moving without moving” which frustrates many of the opponents that I face. The name “The Sloth” actually comes from my college days. (everyone can gasp in surprise now) It was an indication of the speed at which I drank my beer. I drank much slower than many of the people that I partied with. This enabled me to do two things. One: I paid for less rounds since I was never finished with my beer when everyone else was. Two: I could drink much longer than most people. Where my roommate Dave would drink eight beers in an hour and a half and be wasted, I could drink twelve beers in two and a half hours and have a pleasant buzz. But the name stuck, and I now have a list on my fridge of people that will someday be very sorry when they are high ranking individuals and pictures of them in college when they were passed out and naked with an outline of a penis shaved in their chest hair surface and bribe money handed out. Revenge can be sweet.

So now the name has evolved to indicate my method of playing tennis. Imagine if I make it into the big time. I'm at Wimbledon, in the last set tie-breaker. The deafening boom of the crowd is overwhelming as they chant one name over and over like a mantra. “Sloth! Sloth! Sloth!” My power animal emerges as I channel the sloth…and hit the ball into the net because I am too slow to move my feet for the 120 mile-per-hour serve coming to my backhand. Oh, well. At least it all makes sense when I’m drunk.