Continental Frutiger organized a game of Ultimate on Sunday, and when he inquired last week whether I'd be interested or not, at first I was stumped as to what he was talking about.
MU: "Ultimate? Ultimate what?"
CF: "Ultimate Frisbee, silly."
MU: "Why didn't you just say that in the first place?"
CF: "Because its not called that. It's just Ultimate."
Using an adjective as a noun is dicey, particularly when describing a game. As Continental said on Sunday, people would think you were nuts if you played a game of "Awesome", but no one even thinks twice about a game named "Ultimate".
The lesson, as always, is that you shouldn't let frat boys name a game. If you do, it winds up being called "Ultimate", which is completely ridiculous. However, a corollary to this lesson is that frat boys should still invent games -- just not name them. Because Ultimate is pretty damn fun.
***
The park where we were playing Ultimate was across the street from a church, and it being a Sunday, there were kids selling lemonade from a stand to catch people leaving services. They also made a killing off of us...and by us I mean me. I took care of my guys, buying a round of lemonade for everyone on my team AND tipping the kids two bucks.
We needed that lemonade, man, because running up and down a 35-yard field for over an hour is pretty exhausting. It takes intestinal fortitude to keep doing it, when you're out of breath and unable to continue. Winners keep going. Our team won, and then we drank lemonade.
You bet.
***
What I fail to mention is that, while we won, we also blew a gigantic lead. Failing to pace ourselves, we sprinted past the other team and grabbed a 5-1 lead. But then, exhausted, winded, and other words to describe sucking wind, our defense softened. It was 6-5 Good Guys when I made a proclamation:
"Next score, its halftime!"
It sounded good, right? Everyone gets a break, we go drink some beverages, and come back out for the second half. Well this idea was more "Good" than you know. I happened to have some inside knowledge that Continental Frutiger as well as a guy from the Bad Guys team had to leave at 12:45 to get ready for the Symphony. It was 12:30 when I called halftime.
I was hedging my bets that we would score, obviously, because otherwise the game would have ended tied 6-6. If we scored, as I believed we would, then we would win 7-5. And we did. You bet.
And Continental left to get ready for the Nerd Symphony, aka The Omaha Symphony Plays The Songs Of John Williams.
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