LINCOLN SAYS UNCOOL

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Earlier this summer I was permitted by the Ayatollah the opportunity to face Mahmoud in a game of one-on-one basketball. Mahmoud had gone undefeated in such games in the past, but this is misleading. The man is terrible at basketball. The cause of his undefeated streak on the court rested solely on the inadequacy of the opponents the Ayatollah had handpicked for him.

I was supposed to be the next helpless victim in Mahmoud’s never ending winning streak (they assumed my infamous head injury would render me useless on the court), but this was not a role I had any intention of fulfilling.

The game started with the Ayatollah tossing the ball towards Ahmadinejad even though we both were standing at middle court supposed to be waiting for our fair chance at the ball. I figure that should have been expected.

Let me reiterate, Mahmoud is terrible at basketball. When he would dribble down the court, the ball would bounce almost over his head and often he would trip over himself. This, along with my towering height advantage, made it very easy to to destroy him up and down the court.

I recall with a great amount of pride a moment where I stole the ball from him just a few feet from his basket, tossed the ball against the backboard, and then jumped over him to catch the ball with one hand and slam it into the hoop. The crowd went wild and screamed the word, “Green!” repeatedly in unison, the significance of which I would assume was that the word “green” represented how “money” that dunk was. Is “money” a phrase the kids are using these days? I’ll go ask Tad, be back in a minute.

In the meantime, look at this picture.

Anyways, the game clearly appeared to be going in my favor and that it was only a matter of when the clock would run out of time that I would be deemed the victor. However, this is not how it ended.

For reasons I still do not understand, I agreed to allow the score to be kept secret throughout the entirety of the game, only to be shown at the very end. The Ayatollah assured me this was only to create an added aura of suspense to the event, which seemed reasonable, so I decided to go with the flow. Although Stonewall Jackson would object, I have never been one to ruin a party.*

So time finally ran out, and it was clear that I was the victor. I had won the game by at least forty points so there was absolutely no room for argument on whether I had defeated Ahmadinejad or not. But, as I should have seen coming, the score did not reflect this even remotely when revealed.

The board lighted up and revealed our respective names with differing numbers underneath. Under Lincoln read the number four, while a number one hundred and thirty-two could be read under the word Ahmadinejad.

I, as well as the crowd, was incredulous, but our anger was in vain. Absolutely nothing could be done. In the eyes of official history, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would forever be seen as the winner and champion of the sport imported from America but clearly still played by different rules within his homeland. Perhaps in the future, Mahmoud will read the book I sent him, On Basketball, but until then…

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is so uncool.

*This does not, as one might assume, refer to the American Civil War. There was this one time in college when Stonewall was attempting to get everyone at his party to strip to the nude and go break into the Dean’s house to steal his lucky golf clubs. Although noone seemed to be that into his idea, I took the position of the figurehead of the opposition to partake in this puerile activity and he has never forgiven me since. Many would argue this was an underlying cause of the, aforementioned, American Civil War.