Last night my wife and I watched the birthing video at our final baby class, replete with placenta, fluids, and baby.

My one word reaction:

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHhhh!!!!!!!!!!"

Well, now I'm a collegiate athlete, 15 years too late. My church team, Crossroads Christian, who I've written about before, played Messenger Christian College Friday night. The game was official- Messenger's final opponent, St. Louis Something or Another, had some major illness or something like that or tragedy or something, so we ended up on Messenger's schedule as a replacement.

Those of you who know me know that I am NOT a great athlete. I'm decent- which means that I can play every game out there well enough to look like I am a good athlete- baseball, softball, basketball, football (TOUCH- I'm made of tinfoil), bowling, tennis, lawn darts, curling, Scottish Log Tossing, the Luge, Ice Hockey, Field Hockey, Soccer, the Pole Vault, Thoroughbred Racing, Stock Car Driving, Crew Team (Rowing), Yachting, Arm Wrestling, Thumb Wrestling, Greco-Roman Wrestling, Sumo Wrestling, Professional Wrestling (ring-name: Ferret of Doom), Kung Fu, Figure Skating, Gymnastics, Rock Climbing, Paintball, Pinball, Tetherball, Raquetball, Volleyball, Rugby, mountain biking, hiking, jogging, running, speedwalking, rock-paper-scissors, and Cage fighting.

But I was never even remotely able to consider a college career in anything- I was a pretty good ballplayer my freshman year, but between my 9th and 10th grade basketball seasons, I grew six inches from 5'10" to 6'4", and I never recovered. I completely lost the ability to walk in a straight line, much less run up and down a court. It took me six years until my junior year in college to have any co-ordination, by which time I'd gained 35 pounds and lost any interest in competing.

So when the opportunity came to play in my first ever collegiate game, we jumped at the chance. Not a single player on our team played collegiate ball of any kind, although Jacob had numerous offers to play football.

Messenger, as a team, is roughly on par in terms of talent and skill level as an average 4A basketball team with no aspirations to win state. They're a bunch of non-scholarship kids playing ball as they learn their field- in most cases, ministry and missionary training. They play a tough schedule of larger universities like Avila College (who gave Pitt State a TOUGH game earlier in the year) and they hadn't had much success. So even though they're not a GREAT college team, they're still half our age; in shape, faster, and they actually had a defense and offensive scheme.

It was a full 40 minute game, replete with the shot-clock, 3 collegiate officials (including my uncle Warren Turner, who is MSSU's baseball coach), 30 second timeouts, full time outs, announcers, black-out lights, musical introductions, cheerleaders, PAID admission, the whole nine yards. It was AWESOME. It was the first time I'd even been introduced in the starting lineup for anything. I loved it.

We got the scat knocked out of us, 69-37.

We played them tight, down 13 at the half after Messenger hit 2 three-pointers in the last 30 seconds of the first half. As we trudged our way to our locker room (WE HAD A LOCKER ROOM! WITH ONE FUNCTIONING URINAL! WOO HOO!), I paused to look up into the stands at my wife Natalie. She was just grinning at me, either because she was proud of me, or because she knew I was on the verge of having an embolism. Either way, I winked at her as I knocked back about five puffs of my inhaler and plopped down on my seat.

We talked strategy, plans, schemes, and ideas. It didn't matter, we might as well have been drawing cartoon characters on the board. We were going to lose and we knew it, we just wanted to have fun and represent ourselves, our church, and our families well. And we did. We just didn't have the legs. We'd get a rebound, but we'd have spent all our energy going up for it. So when we went to jump again, we just kinda hovered an inch above the ground. It was ugly.

Messenger's inside game was non-existent- but they just smoked us from 3 point land and fast break point. If you read my blogs earlier this year about our team, my main concern was the fact that we have ZERO guardplay. None. Nobody can handle the ball at all. So they came out in a relatively agressive 1-3-1 trap zone, which of course, we could do nothing against, so we just took turns turning the ball over and failing to hustle back on defense to guard against the fast break. When they saw we couldn't handle pressure, they really tightened the screws and came out in a half court man, which stifled us unless we were able to score on penetration (which I did twice) or firing up off-balance shots and cleaning up the boards (which Jacob and Chad Bay did.) We simply were too slow to keep them from launching the three, they ended up with 8 for the game. Argh.

Our legs finally gave out with about six minutes remaining on the clock- a 16 point lead for them became 30 in a span of just over 3 minutes as we turned it over about 10000 times in a row, which they converted on.

I spent the last three minutes on the bench after I went to jump for an entry pass from Tracy Rowe, our minister, but I never left the ground. My knee buckled and I hurt my back on the same play, so I sat down. It was okay- I was exhausted and thrilled at the same time.

Messenger got a nice win to end their season with- the student body that was there had fun cheering, and the paid attendance of 104 got their money's worth, and we got a nice dinner at Cracker Barrel following the slaughter- er, game. When I got home, I took a 45 minute bath in the jacuzzi and popped 3 Advils to ease my pain.

Saturday morning, I rushed to the Conoco and bought a Joplin Globe. There, I got to see something I never thought I would see- my name in a box score under COLLEGE BASKETBALL. Chad Fletcher, 4 points. I also had about 10 rebounds and 4 assists, and I nearly killed a kid (seriously- he was out of control coming down the lane and as he passed the ball, I put my arms up to defend myself- I guess I pushed a little DOWN on him and he fell headfirst onto the court. He laid there for nearly a minute, groaning.)

We told them we'd play them again for an exhibition game next year- they don't lose a single player for next season, and now we know their game (heh,heh). We'd also like to challenge KU. And the San Antonio Spurs.

Because by golly, we're college athletes.

Last night my wife and I attended the "Relaxation and Breathing (LaMaze)" Class at St. John's Hospital in Joplin. This was the fifth in a series of six classes that my wife and I are attending. Natalie's been to all of them, I missed the first one because of movie night here at school. But last night was the one that I was most looking forward to, primarily because of all things I've heard about it. Bill Cosby's classic standup routine about it still makes me laugh just thinking about it.

The lady who taught the class is probably a resident of the 1960s.....she reminds me of a bird, just casually flapping her wings against the wind, moving just enough to stay afloat on the air. She really started just quietly, smoothly going on and on about breathing and the benefits of relaxation......she had me until she told us the story of a couple who were delivering a child long after their two other kids had grown up- an "oops" child, if you catch my meaning. She said she had seen this couple practicing relaxing breathing, and then BAM- she lost me. She told about how 6 months later she ran into the same couple again at the store and the man told her about how just a while before, he had an industrial auger fall on him and completely crush his pelvis, and the only thing that got him through it was the relaxation breathing techniques.

1. Bull.
2. If an industrial auger completely crushed your pelvis, you sure as HECK aren't up and about talking about how great breathing and relaxing is. Those things are huge.

But on to the breathing. The entire key to relaxation and breathing is slow, controlled breaths that should serve the primary function of slowing down your pulse, releasing tension, and reducing panic-like symptoms.

Last night all it succeeded in doing was making me and every other guy in the room feel stupid.

She used simulated contractions for us to practice our breathing.......in throught the nose (hee's) and out through the mouth (hoo's). She would do it slowly, but when pain gets bad (as we were supposed to pretend was happening) we were supposed to go "Hee hee Hoo"- twice in, once out. Well......here is what happened.

Lady: Okay....the contractions are getting tougher...
Me: Hee Hee Hoo
Lady: Now they're really getting tough.....lots of pain, but breathe....
Me: Hee HEE HOO
Lady: Still lots of pain...holding steady, like some contractions do.....this is the Hiroshima of abdominal pain....
Me: HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HOO
Lady: You're gonna die.
Me: HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE (Whump)
Lady: What happened?
Natalie (my wife): He forgot to HOO.

After I woke up, we started again. I was careful not to make eye contact with the other guys because we would start laughing.....

Lady: Okay, the contractions are coming again....you hate your husband.....he did this to you.....
Me: HEE HEE HOO
Lady: Okay, Ha ha Hoo..
Me: What? What's this "ha" crap? I just now got the Hee's and the Hoo's down...and you throw a "ha" my way? Are you serious?
(Natalie punches me in the arm)

Now I'm not downplaying this at all or making fun of it. Because the women in the video we watched all looked supremely miserable, especially the EXTREMELY LARGE one who was using a relaxation technique called "Vocalization," in which the woman in labor would utter low sounds. I call it the "Moose Calling for Mate" technique instead, because if I were to go in the woods and play this videotape on full volume, I would have a buttload of horny mooses (Meese? Mooses?) stampeding down my back looking for some nice Moose Action.

But we don't really need it, in my humble opinion, as Natalie is opting for the method of "Receiving an epidural before we even get to the hospital, preferably a month early." Natalie is a tough gal- she has a very high pain tolerance. She MUST if she is married to me. However, she is not taking any chances. I am happy with this too, because there are only a few things that make me cry- and Natalie being in pain is one of them. Guys, you'll understand one day, you really will.

I hope you all have a great day of HEE-ing, just don't forget to HOO.

Help! I'm "Lost!"

I am completely hooked on the tv series, "Lost." Completely and totally hooked, worse than the biggest cokehead....I love it. I got the DVD set of season 1 of the hit show for my birthday two weeks ago, and I've found the time to watch seven episodes. It is my new addiction.

For those of you who live in a bubble and have not heard of the show, it is a story of 47 (at least to this point- remember, I'm virtually clueless as to spoilers for the show) survivors of a plane crash who are stranded on a mysterious island. That in itself is a neat scenario, IMO, since I am a huge fan of William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" and the Tom Hanks film "Castaway." I even loved "Swiss Family Robinson" when I was a kid, and my brother and I used to draw up blueprints for the largest treehouse in the world like they had in the movie. The only problem was we had no money, no wood, and no trees capable of supporting our dream mansion.

The real appeal for "Lost" to me is the oddities that surround their crash- big mysterious creatures roaming the island, scrapes with wild boars and polar bears (yes, polar bears on a tropical island), strange repeating messages over 16 years old spoken by a French woman who speaks of "The Others" being all dead.....it is crazy.

The characters are great- each of their stories are told via flashback...the mythology of this show is incredible. No wonder its ratings are unbelievably high. It has a massive following that makes it truly one of this decade's biggest television phenomena.

The writing is superb- JJ Abrams is brilliant, Damon Lindelof (who is now writing the extremely cool WOLVERINE vs HULK comic series), and Paul Dini (who wrote the entire BATMAN animated series) have crafted a tale of vast complexity that leaves me begging for more at the end of each episode.

Therein lies the problem. This show is SO Big that people are talking about it EVERYWHERE- except, typically enough, at the high school where I teach, where the fuel gauge of pop culture awareness is bouncing on 'E.' I can't listen to anything on the radio on Thursdays without radio hosts giving away spoilers for the show. I had to scream at the top of my lungs and turn the channel 10 times during the Super Bowl because of the "Lost" ads, and even on ESPN they made a reference to a con that Sawyer pulled. But I didn't know about the con that Sawyer pulled, I don't WANT to know about the con that Sawyer pulled, and if any of you tell me what con that Sawyer pulled was, I will drive to your house, beat down your door, tie you up, and make you watch "The Dukes of Hazzard" ten times in a row. Now that movie is crap. But that's for another rant.

I know a little bit about how the first season ends, but please don't tell me anything else. Or...well, see the preceding sentences for the punishment.

By the way, aren't DVD sets of our favorite shows wonderful? I don't have cable or a satellite- it's $45 a month that I haven't been able to convince my wife Natalie to spend, though she may be weakening (right, sweetie?) But thanks to DVD's I've been able to watch shows like Deadwood, Smallville (seasons 1-4), That 70s Show, Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, Babylon 5......and many others, on my own watch. And with baby Audrey on the way, the ability to watch shows when I want instead of randomly (some would say angrily) chosen times has really made me happy.

By the way, if I was ever stranded on a tropical island with giant monsters, polar bears, and wild boars, I'd find a volleyball, name it "Mortimer," and put on a one man rendition of "The Dukes of Hazzard."

Long time, no blog.....

This has been a nightmarishly busy week. I am up to my armpits in research papers, some of which are pretty good, many of which are average, some of which are atrocious. But isn't that the way it always is?

Speaking of atrocious, how bad was the officiating in the Super BOwl? That phantom offensive pass interference call really hosed the Seahawks after Darrell Jackson's TD catch was waved off by the back Judge. But that didn't cost the Seahawks the game. Their inability to make field goals and Jeremy Stevens dropping 1000 passes made them lose the game.

So officials don't decide games.

But they sure influence the outcome.

See OU versus KU on Sunday.

OU had a 16 point lead with roughly 7 minutes to go. Safe lead, right? Nope. OU got complacent, just passing the ball around the perimeter and launching ill-timed shots. KU roared back into the game.

WHat I'm angry about is the fact that the referees CHOKED on their whistles the last two minutes. Every time Taj Gray and Kevin Bookout got the ball down low they got HAMMERED and the refs never blew this whistle. Not once.

YOu know why? Because it is KU. The Big 12 is not happy unless KU atop the standings. For years they've feasted on an imbalanced scheduling system that has allowed them to feast on the crappy Northern teams each year while only having to play the southern teams once. Do you honestly think KU would have won the regular season if they had to play Texas, OU, OSU, and Texas Tech twice a year?
KU is the team that brings in the prize recruits like BRandon RUsh. So when Rush fouls someone, Big 12 officials tend to look the other way- after all, he's the big moneymaker for KU, who is the big moneymaker for the Big 12, so we can't have him fouling out of games or make HIM look bad, can we?
Nope.