Recently a certain popular YouTube morning show put out a call for fans to apply to guest-write an episode. On a lark, I submitted an application. Seeing as fan-written episodes have already began airing, I am once again using my excellent detective skills to deduce that my application wasn’t selected.
However, part of the application was to, in 500 words or less, tell the story of the funniest thing that ever happened to me. I submitted the following story about an eventful basketball practice in high school.
(To be honest, I don’t know if it’s the funniest thing that ever happened to me, but I started the application on the final day they were accepting submissions, and this is what I could write-up during my still working-from-home lunch break.)
I played basketball in high school. During a certain practice, the team was spread out over the gym in pairs at different stations. We would focus on our respective station’s skill, and after about ten minutes, a whistle would be blown and we’d rotate to the next station. Occasionally, Coach would stop us to offer some additional instructions.
I was paired up with my best friend throughout this practice, and we had our own game going on: trying to get the other to laugh during these times when we should have been paying attention to Coach. My buddy spent one of these special instruction segments pretending his head was glued to my back and he couldn’t pull it off.
During the next one, I stood in front of him, hands on hips, attentively listening to Coach. While receiving our new instructions, I slowly pulled the back of my shorts down, giving my buddy the full moon. I knew that from the front, it would look like I was just standing there. And I knew that based on our position, there was no one else in the gym behind me who could see what I was doing.
What I didn’t know was that the drill team was having their own practice right outside the gym, and through the window in the gym door, girls who I was too shy to talk to at any point during my teenage years had great seats to the show I was putting on for my best friend.
Coach finished with what he was telling us, and released the team for a quick water break. The water fountains were right outside the door I was just mooning, and I was a little confused at the applause and cheers that greeted us as my friend and I were first out of the gym. We weren’t a great team and didn’t have much vocal support from our classmates, so spontaneous applause was definitely out of the ordinary.
It wasn’t until one of the drill team members shouted, “Nice ass, Yost!” that I realized the claps were for me and my particularly pale posterior. Embarrassed (but no longer bare-assed), I got my drink of water, gave a Tiger-Woods-like fist pump to my new adoring fans, and quickly got back in the gym.
My buddy was cracking up, so I definitely won the game between us. But for a brief moment, an awkward teenager got a self-esteem boost because he was too dumb to check his surroundings before partially dropping trou.
And with that newfound confidence, I then proceeded to still never talk to any of those drill team girls.
But(t) hey, my wife says she likes my sweet buns, so that’s pretty cool.
Christian Yost 