Strange Week--Watch Your Back Karma

Warning****Very long post, but if you can laugh at yourself you will appreciate it because as I wrote this I laughed pretty hard at myself.****

My whole life I have been superstitious before playing or coaching in a big basketball game. I always think I can make deals with karma or fate or what ever you want to call it. I figure if I eat and shower at certain times it changes the universe in a positive way for my team or if I wear a specific tie it makes us score more. It sounds crazy because it is crazy. Going into this week we knew it would be important for us since we were playing two of the best teams in our league. I should have known that all my made up deals with karma this year would catch up to me.

We won our first big game of the week on the road by 20 over a very good TCU team. We had won 10 games in a row. Things were looking up. My family came to the game and it was a great trip overall (don't be fooled by Tyler's fake smile, they had fun).



I frequently think things like, "If we can win this game I am willing to have something embarrassing happen to me," or something along those lines. As soon as we got back to Provo karma decided to start cashing in on all of my deals I have made with it. Karma started slow, but built up like a tidal wave, a real jerky tidal wave. Here are the things that karma has done to me this week to cash in on all of my pleas for victories this year.

1. I had an intramural basketball game and the team we played looked like 4th graders. We won by 80, and that was only because we played with 4 for most of the game. It was not fun and I look forward to getting to play competitive basketball games. At this point I didn't realize that the karma monster was involved, I simply thought that we wasted our night playing a crappy team.

2. The next day Carly left to go visit Lexie in Oregon. It was like karma knew it couldn't hit me with full force with Carly around so it had her leave me so I would be helpless against what was coming. I still didn't think things were going badly since Carly had planned this trip for a while, but I did get suspicious on the way home from the airport when I was stuck in traffic for 2 hours due to a fender bender and stupid Utah drivers.

3. I figured things would get better since I had a city league game that night. Like I said I love competitive basketball so I was excited. We played ok and traded the lead back and forth throughout the game, but then karma got dirty, like below the belt dirty. I beat someone on a drive (I should have stopped right then because I never drive around ANYONE. This was very suspicious looking back on it.) and pulled up for a jumper and the guy I drove around took me out football style right on the side of my right knee. Long story short, our trainer says she is 95% sure I tore my ACL. I don't care how you abbreviate it, it hurts and is really annoying. At this point I still thought it was just a bad day.

4. So after I get home from my game and attempt to shower without falling over I decide to go to the store to get some food since we didn't have much. How bad could this be? I was driving half a mile to get some cereal and milk. Well it was bad because my parking lot is like an ice skating rink as soon as I put my car in reverse and it hit the ice it slid down hill into the front of my other car. Yes I hit my own car with my other car. Now all it did was put a small crack in the front bumper, but this is still infuriating. I finally started thinking that karma had something to do with this all. I mean I really wanted to win at TCU, but this was getting to be a bit much.

****Intermission***********Yes there is more.********

5. Before our game on Saturday we went to eat pregame meal and it took FOREVER to get our food. Plus their credit card machine wouldn't work so I alread knew I would have to return later to pay for our food even though we were upset about that same food. Then before the game I was walking around in the Marriott and my knee gave out. I went down like a sack of hammers. Now I did appreciate the humor of someone falling down, but it hurt at the same time so I was angry.

6. So then we played New Mexico which was another huge game. We played pretty well, not great, but good enough we whould have won. However that did not happen because one team shot 31 free throws and the other shot 9. Go ahead and guess who shot what. We lost by four and at this point I knew karma was the culprit, but it had gone too far as if it was going for everything in one week. I started to put a positive twist on things like if I use all my bad luck right now then for the rest of the season we will be awesome. I mean I had to do something to start fighting back.

7. Karma continued its onslaught with unrelenting force when I returned to pay for our pregame meal after our game and upon turning on my car it would not shift out of park. Why you ask? I still have no clue, but after figuring out the shift lock release (yes Hyundai has a shift lock release because apparently they know that there is a chance your car will just decide to lock up) I was able to get home. The thing is now I am paranoid that there is something wrong with the car even though all the reviews I have read say it just happens in the cold sometimes. Who knows.

8. Now I realize that this is a very long post, but hopefully all 2 of you who read this realize that I simply need to vent a little bit. Anyway after getting my car to work I watched a movie with a couple of friends and it was terrible. So bad that I don't even remember the name. Last night I went to watch another movie and it was essentially the same level of crap as the movie from the night before.

9. At this point I figure things can't get worse, but great news, things did get a little worse. Carly just called me before she left to go to the airport and said she thinks her wedding ring got flushed down the toilet. In all honesty I really don't care that much, but this made Carly upset which is not good for me. Hopefully she will just be happy to get back home. Pretty low karma, pretty low mister.

Well with all of my complaining out of the way maybe now karma owes me and everything will go my way for a while. Maybe we will find Carly's ring, find out my knee is just fake hurt, and my team will go to the final four. These probably wont happen, but at least I know that when I make my next plea for victory that karma owes me and he had better pay up...or else.