I COULD HAVE BEEN A CONTENDER...

We went to a party on Good Friday with a relatively new bunch of people.  Well, not really new, but new in the sense we shared pina coladas and got caught in the rain.  Literally.

 
And in those moments of sucking down frosty beverages which may or may not have had double the amount of alcohol recommended, a few admissions came out.   One of which may lead me forever, to  look at our host and neighbour Nick, differently.

 

Now both of our neighbours, Jen and Nick, are,  well, fucking hot.  I can’t really put it any other way.  All of their friends are also, well, fucking hot.  It was like a Chadwicks Lookbook over there.  We’ve been fairly social with them, but not to the point where it got to this:

 



So what was this admission that blew my mind? 


Well, it was this:  Nicholas was age champion in AUSTRALIA when he was under ten for Walking.  You know? The kind of walking that you nearly do a hip on because you must have one foot on the ground at any one time.  I still can’t quite remember how we got onto this topic but here’s a picture of me when Jen told me:

re-enactment

 

Of course I held on to this info until I could pin Nick and drill him about his very close call with the Olympics.  It was apparent the indignation and the passion still burns.  See, apparently his mum totally ripped him off.  She went out and bought him long, over the knee socks and although, yes, he did “cheat”, it was more noticeable with the long socks and even though the other kid cheated too, his short socks left that kid, undetected.  Nick walked away from the sport after that. Jesus, who knows what could have been?

 
This got me to thinking, on my very slow recovery from the night, had I had a close call at being great at something?  I thought and I wondered and I contemplated and yep.  No.  I hadn’t.

 
All I could come up with was when I made the Top 5 in "Junior Sale of the Century".    I got knocked out by a buck toothed wing nut who gave me the sneaky middle finger when no one was looking.  No pick of the board for me.

 
Oh, wait, there was that one time we took out the inter-McDonalds cheerleading competition.  I’ll let you digest that for a minute.  The inter MCDONALDS cheerleading competition.  Um, why weren’t we getting busy flipping burgers?  Far as I know, no one gave a shit if I could make a perfect Pyramid, it was all about getting their meal to them in less than 2 minutes.  Team building exercise on roids.  But, hey, we still got the trophy and I take it where I can get it.

 
What about you? Did you nearly make it?  Were you involved in something obscure that just doesn’t get the recognition it deserves?