Hanging From the Rafters: Kansas State 64, Texas 61

I’ve run out of words discussing Texas losses, so my girlfriend offered to write one for me. Enjoy:

After reading Bitterwhiteguy’s blogs, I am sure at some point you have wondered, is there a woman behind the man? Is there someone who was brave enough to confront his bitterness and tolerate his obsession with a losing basketball team? Why yes there is. Me. Bitterwhitegirl (name made up to compliment his name, but trust me, I am not bitter like he is). For the last 13 years. Are you impressed? No? Well you should be.

After watching this basketball team lose over and over (with the occasional win for false hope) for the past season, I finally said to him one night, “honey, next time they lose, let me write something for you, I have so much I can write about!” He replied, “sure, have at it.” So this is my “the basketball team lost again” contribution.

Where to start? How about birth? I was born with a handicap called “strabismus.” Basically, my eyes didn’t fuse together when I was born which resulted in them working independently of each other. I see out of one eye at time. What does mean exactly? It means I don’t have any depth perception. Yep, zero depth perception. For the most part I have learned how to compensate for my lack of depth perception, although I will never be able to fly a plane, luckily I don’t rear end every car I stop behind. Unfortunately though it does mean I keep hitting things with the back quarter panel of my car. I love my dream car, a 2015 Subaru WRX (stick shift of course!) but I shouldn’t be allowed to back the car up. Even with a backup camera on it, I keep scraping the back quarter panel on things (a total of 3 times over 1.5 years).

About at this point you are probably thinking, “why the hell is she telling me this?” Let me explain. Because of my lack of depth perception, I have never played games with balls. Any game that involved balls – tennis, soccer, volleyball, baseball, softball, football, kickball, basketball, etc. – I simply did not play, unless forced to in those horrible gym classes in school and yes I was always picked last because I sucked. Due to my hatred of games with balls, I have grown up to be an adult to doesn’t enjoy watching sports that involve balls. Which means, when Bitterwhiteguy watches UT basketball, UT baseball or UT football, I go to the other room. Hell, we went to the Bahamas for some basketball tournament and I didn’t go to one game with him. If you ever see me the stands with him, it’s probably because I’ve been bribed to go, not because I want to be there.

I digress. Let’s get back to the topic at hand. Sports. That’s what you came for, right? As you know, I didn’t play any sports involving balls. So what sport did I do? I was a competitive swimmer in High School. After High School I got into lifting weights, triathlons (for 10 years and was a coach for 3 years), and then at the age of 41 I started circus. I mean, because, who doesn’t start circus at the age of 41? I found a couple of Living Social deals for aerial silks classes at two different studios in town and went for it. If you aren’t certain what I mean by “circus” or “aerial silks” watch this Cirque du Soleil video:

Even though I had been athletic most of my life, trying to climb on those silks was a challenge. It was hard. REALLY HARD. I think it took me a good 2 months to be able to climb all of 10 feet on the silks. Of course I had dreams that I would be as amazing as those Cirque du Soleil performers. I’m sure you know where this is going… I was not. Here are some comical highlights from the past 3 years:

This was a drop I taught to myself after watching videos on Instagram. My instructors would staunchly disapprove of me teaching myself a drop from an Instagram video. Anyways, I wanted to use it in a competition routine. I could never get it right and ditched the move all together.

For one of my acts I decided to add a neck hang into the routine. I taught it to myself and quickly learned that too small of a hoop and pulling on one of the silks it quickly becomes a noose! I won’t lie, this one scared me a bit. It should be noted that when I told one instructor I taught this to myself, she bitched me out and said I could decapitate or hang myself. Well yeah, I learned about the whole “you could hang yourself” thing on my own.

Let's call this the "accidental ankle hang"! Yes this is an actual move but I didn't mean to do it (should have stopped at a knee hang) and it is one of the most insecure ankle hangs. As you will see, I kept my calm and went with it but my feet are barely hanging on!

If you are curious, here is what a “safe” ankle hang looks like:

Anyways, to be fair, I’m not always a disaster when I’m up in the air. Here’s a nice off the back single star drop that I didn’t screw up!

After a couple of years of doing aerial silks, I decided to start doing lyra. If you aren’t sure what that is, watch this Cirque du Soleil video:

Let me just say, the hoop is a mean lover. She fights back and it isn’t pretty. Bitterwhiteguy is always getting to see new bruises I have, in odd places. He honestly doesn’t even think twice about me looking beat up anymore. The best bruises though were between my butt cheeks. You hit the next level of being an aerialist when you have bruises in your butt crack.

As I’m sure you already know I also have comical moments on the lyra. Here I am trying a new roll, and it didn’t go well:

Then there is this move where I slammed my feet on the metal hoop. That one hurt.

Finally, just to give you a laugh, if you haven’t already - Look at mah leg! Look at it!

For the 10 of you who made it to the end, you won’t have to worry about me doing another one of these anytime soon. When we originally talked about this, I thought, “only 1,000 to 1,200 words?” Ugh. Let me tell you it was hard to write 1,000 to 1,200 words! I’m just writing about myself and it was challenging. I have no clue how Bitterwhiteguy writes these after each basketball game. How many different ways can he write about “they lost again.” I can’t imagine that many, but he does it, game after losing game! I certainly respect what he does and won’t be asking to do it again soon! Texas needs to start winning so he doesn’t have to be tortured writing about this losing team anymore!

The Texas Longhorns play at West Virginia Mountaineers on Monday, tip is 8 PM CT on ESPN.