Cat Calls

I joined a sand volleyball team even though my skills are rudimentary at best. Yes I was captain of my high school volleyball team…but we were horrible and only won one game the entire season. Oh and that ONE win came when we played a freshman level team…and we were Varsity!
So it was a safe bet that the other members of my sand volleyball team were better players than me. Don’t get the wrong impression; even though they were better than me skill wise, the team as a whole still was pretty below average…even for our league which was basically the Special Olympics of volleyball. Yes I did go there…the recreational league was a minor hand-eye coordination away from foam helmets and bibs.
Our strategy was to hit the ball the least amount of times. Other teams would try to pass, set, spike and we were content to just pass it back over to their side on the first contact. This way they touched the balls three times more often than us. Since we were in the “just for fun” league, more often than not, the ball would drop due to lack of skill (hitting it in the net, out of bounds, or just plain dropping the…ball) and not due to actual kills. If a team could perform an actual pass, set, spike successfully, then they had no right to be in our league of cheerleaders and dwarfs.
Our “let the other team have the ball and mess up” strategy worked well enough to land in the playoffs. We were ranked 18th out of 20 teams. Our first opponent was another shitty team like us, and the winner would play the #2 seed. Yay! Well we won the first game, and moved on to take down the powerhouse. Seriously, they could seriously spike and do trick sets…I mean what the fuck, you are basically in a children’s league…does signing up for an inferior league just so you can dominate make you feel good asshats? We just sat back, braced ourselves, and took the punishment. Who needs to block when you have six people waiting to receive the rancid spike and bump it right back over. Sure enough, the super team would get all fancy and acted as their own worst enemy. After a few spikes to the net, they started bickering and got all frustrated because hey we were not the better team yet we were winning…as expected, their performance plummeted.
So after the first week of playoffs, and knocking off the #2 seed (which we considered a fluke because we frankly suck), we continued to dominate opponents. We were the true Cinderella team. The #6 and #4 ranked teams came and went, and finally we faced the #1 seed in the championship game. Okay for the record, their guys were like 6’-100” tall and all of their girls had junior college level volleyball experience. The first spike rocketed down into the front row like a shame seeking missile and nearly took my head off. I whined to the other team “don’t do that!” which they found humorous…but I was totally serious (who actually enjoys getting their ass handed to them). Well we applied our one pass policy which made the other team really cocky…then irritated. Yep, sure enough, all their tricks and perfect skill did let them down because they touched the ball three times more than us (and we were scrappy…and short like Scrappy Doo). At one point, one of their frustrated super athletes yelled at the team “come on, they aren’t even good, Jesus!” We ended up beating them in three very close matches (or games, or sets, whatever, that is how little I know about volleyball now). Yep the Cinderella found her slipper that night and it didn’t sink in until they handed us our championship t-shirts (see it is a retarded league…they can’t give out trophies because someone may loose an eye).

Now to the funny story…
One of the guys on my team told us all about his cat…that he loves…and buys presents for on its birthday. Oh yeah, we gave him so much shit for this. I mean how can you love a cat so much when it doesn’t even acknowledge you are alive (unless it is feeding time). He seriously does wrap up presents for the cat on the cat’s birthday, even makes a special cat food cake treat. He has even cut short vacations because it pisses off the cat when he is away for too long. Well another team member saw the guy post on his facebook wall “Happy Birthday Clark, looking forward to presents tonight”. It was like a land mine of fodder for us. So the team secretly kicked around ideas about what we can do to the guy to torment him. One person suggested sending him thank you cards “signed” by Clark (the cat). We could send flowers or a fruit basket, but that didn’t seem funny enough. Sure enough, we settled on creating an email account for his cat. Yes you read right...the cat now has email. The email name is “Clark The Cat”. The cat will randomly write to his owner about barfing in his shoe, ideas for their “date night”, and how he passes the day silently judging people outside his window. The emails are so random because six different people write them which is really throwing him off (especially if we purposely send one while he is physically in front of the latest suspects and therefore immediately disqualified). Maybe after a few months the email will dwindle down to just one or two a week…until Clark sends him an e-vite for a Christmas party.
Here is one of my favorite “Clark” emails (I am not the author and totally did laugh out loud to the point of tears)
first, thanks for leaving the TV on for me before you left for work today...as I was watching 'The Price is Right' reruns, I heard Barney's dad telling everyone to get their pets Spayed or Neutered...which reminded me of when I got Spayed and you told me that it meant that I would have better eye vision afterwards...you know what, I looked it up on Wikipedia and that is NOT what it means...you f**king a-hole...what If I did that to you? Would you like that??!! I would...we'd get to see each other more on weekend evenings. That would be like someone locking the doors at a 7/11. It just doesn't make sense??!! you owe me bitch.

Love
Clark
p.s. now I want Lasik eye surgery