That Time When My Buddy Got His Wife Beater Ripped on the Basketball Court

8th grade was crazy confusing. You were always in your feelings (thanks, puberty), your body was doing weird shit (again, puberty), and the only thing most people wanted during this time was to fit in.

No groundbreaking discoveries here, but this environment made for a ton of great stories. For example, the rapid influx of testosterone in 8th grade dudes made the basketball court a powder keg which took just 1 hard foul to ignite. Also, kids at this age are super silly and dumb and will get agro about things that in reality mean absolutely nothing.

Cut to this after school pickup basketball game featuring me and my childhood buddies. Everyone on the court kind of knew what they were doing so it wasn’t hackish to start. But boy did it get hackish to finish. The two people involved in this 9th grade mini-war were a kid I’ll call Booch because that’s his name and a kid I’ll call Conde Nast because rumor has it he works there now.

Booch and Conde Nast never really liked each other and the reasons for that were either vaguely suggested or completely nonexistent. Like I said before young kids are savage as fuck: I remember being hated on because I had a Schwinn bike with pegs instead of a Haro bike with pegs. That purchase alone set me back socially like 3 years.

Anyway, Booch and Conde Nast for whatever reason didn’t get along but they both found themselves at this game. The game flow was pretty normal from what I remember. They weren’t exactly the same size so they didn’t match up on D but also this was 9th grade pickup so there was no D. All of a sudden, Conde Nast took it pretty hard to the rim, and Booch, who was 5’9 or so and essentially the big in the group, was the only guy between Nast and the rim. Booch tried valiantly, but Nast laid it in pretty sick. Booch wasn’t about to be outdone though.

Now’s probably a good time to mention that the game was in my friend’s front yard and the height of this rim was maybe 7 and a half feet. Booch was a 9th grade big. 9th grade bigs wanna dunk on tiny rims. And this time Booch was looking to dunk on Conde Nast.

“Check up”, said Booch.

Nast checks up to Booch. Booch passes the ball to me.

“Right back.”

I give the ball right back.

Booch bull rushes the rim like an ass-on-fire Lance Stephenson. The only thing Booch sees are 2 bullseyes: one on the rim for his dunk, and one on Conde Nast’s chest for his knee. Booch goes up strong a f and so does Conde Nast. Then…

Booch throws the ball into a fucking house. His “dunk attempt” was nowhere near the rim. He got fouled hard but the takeaway is this: when he went up for that dunk he was wearing a dark blue wife beater and when he came down he was wearing a dark blue single strap tube top. He was wearing the Burlington Coat Factory clearance version of the Wilma Flintstone dress. No one knew what to make of this. They banged pretty damn hard and yet the only result was that one guy was wearing less clothes than he did before he went airborne.

Booch’s team got the ball back and a stripped down, cavewoman dress wearing Booch ended up scoring the rest of our team’s points to lead us to victory.

So 8th graders, learn to let go of things on the basketball court. If you don’t, your t-shirt might get shredded by a future ad analyst at a major magazine conglomerate.

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