Sports... and sports analogies

So a couple weeks ago Nate calls me from work and wants me to answer some questions for him. He says that he and his work buddies have a bet going about me and another guy at work. And what was this little quiz about??

SPORTS TEAMS!

That's right, the ultimate showdown! Between two clueless people!!!

Nate was rooting for me, oh yes, he was like sure my wife hates sports, but surely she will get these.

Ahhh poor guy. He should know by now the sports part of my brain is just too tiny to hold much information!

So Nate told me the sport and city and I was supposed to name the team. Here are some of the questions and my answers. How would YOU do?!!

1. L.A.: "Rockets?"

2. MINNESOTA: "Twinsox?" (Yes I said Twinsox!)

3. NEW JERSEY: "Knickerbockers?"

4. SAN DIEGO STATE: "Suns?" (I even went to this BYU game!)

5. SAN FRANCISCO: "Knickerbockers?" (it's just fun to say.)

6. CLEVELAND: "Angels?" (Good guess.)

7. CHICAGO: "Redsox?" (got the SOX part right!!!)

8. OHIO STATE: "Braves?"

ANSWERS:
1. Clippers.
2. Twins.
3. Nets.
4. Aztecs.
5. Giants.
6. Indians.
7. Cubs or Whitesox.
8. Buckeyes.

Pretty embarrassing. Nate only wrote down some of the ones I got wrong cause he thought they were so funny, but I'd like you to know my score WAS 6 out of 22 so I knew SOMETHING. And yet I still lost by ONE, dangit. And one of the other guy's answers was, "Ohio State Shamrock People." CLEARLY I am smarter...

Speaking of Nate and sports and not being on the same page, I'm gonna flash back and tell a funny story.

I've written a lot about our past on here and this one always makes me laugh. SO. We were GREAT friends from 8th grade on, right, but we didn't get together until my senior year. We'd hang out and hang out and flirt and flirt and OH YEAH I liked him! BUT one thing stood in the way and that was me not thinking we could ever be romantic. It doesn't make sense, I know, because I was crazy about him. But I was too afraid to ruin the dynamic of our awesome, playful, fun friendship. I didn't want to start dating and have it be weird and then it wouldn't be the same. Nate KNEW I was scared of this (cause I'd already rejected him once, you know, the "lets just be friends" line) so he totally backed off showing his feelings for me cause he didn't want to scare me off again. SO that is where we are in this story, my junior year.

We were studying calculus together, or SUPPOSED to be studying. He showed me songs he made up on the piano, we did each other's hair, we played with paper dolls, anything but study. But I desperately needed help before our test so finally we got down to studying and I was talking about how it's crazy I could make it through school with good grades because I was such a procrastinator. We were being silly, so I drew a little diagram in my notes how I "coasted" through school. I wrote, "Coasting: slide to first base. Slide to second. Slide to third. But you'll never make it home!" Well this led to us making up analogies using baseball. And Nate started using this strategy to explain his feelings for me. He didn't SAY that, but how would YOU take this conversation?

He told me home plate was his dream girl. So he'd go from base to base, all the while really wanting that home plate off in the distance. He'd try to get there, but he'd get scared off because she had the bat. I was like please don't tell me I'm home plate, please don't tell me I'm home plate, and what does he do? He tells me in so many words I am his home plate!! Sweet, right??? Well at the time I was unsure where I wanted "us" to go, so WHAT do I say to that? So this is the funny part: I totally played dumb!!! I acted like I just did not get what the heck he was talking about. I laughed and made jokes and talked about how dangerous I was with a bat and that he better watch out.

WHEW! Avoided THAT conversation!

Ummm, no.

Nate, obviously failing with that analogy, tried again. So he starts explaining that I am in the outfield (he even drew pictures, probably cause he is like, okay this girl needs some visualization) with some other people and he is at bat and he is going to hit his heart for someone to catch. He said that wherever he hit it the person could choose to miss it, reject it, or catch his heart. Then he asks me where he should hit the ball, aka HIS HEART!!! This was pretty cut and dried, I knew perfectly well he wanted me to say "TO ME, BABY!" but the truth was I didn't know if I could do it! But I did NOT want to reject him! So, once again I stall and go to my fall back plan and bring out "Airhead Erika" and played SO naïve and confused and desperately tried bringing up irrelevant things like "I don't know, ha ha, who's catcher?" and changing the subject.

Well Nate left that night completely believing that I just had no clue what he was getting at, which is so funny because could he couldn't be more obvious!

Three months later we had the REAL conversation without any mention of baseball. And I ended up rejecting him (Let's just be friends... again!) I was too afraid!!

Well we stayed friends somehow, I mean how awesome is he!!!)

A few months later we had the "talk" for the third time and it was just different, I wasn't so scared anymore and was confident we had to try because something had been between us for YEARS! And we officially started dating. WELL you can see how that turned out!

Later when he found out DUH of course I understood those baseball analogies WHO WOULDN'T he was like SERIOUSLY? We laughed. For his birthday I gave him a baseball with "Erika + Nate" and "I caught it!" written on it.

Good times!