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What was the best day of your life?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by BB Bobcat, Feb 2, 2010.

  1. Bruce Springsteen took my request for Jungleland on April 26, 2009 in Atlanta.
     
  2. LWillhite

    LWillhite Member

    Before I met my wife and we had our kids, I'd rank professional stuff first, last and always. I'll get to that, but I'm just a boring dad now so I'll go personal first because it interests me more.

    Our middle child is 4 and just has something about her. Quite often, she'll stop in the midst of something and declare she's having the best day of her life. Happened on Christmas. Happened again on Thursday just because she enjoyed her play date at a friend's house so much. It pleases me to no end to hear that she loves life. Makes my day and then some. Now, if only she'd stop sucking her thumb.

    I'd list more kid things, but you all would get bored. So...

    Professional 1: I'm 26 in 1994 and going to cover the Prairie State Games (an Olympics-style shindig in Illinois). For some reason, I'm compelled to throw my high-tops in the car just in case. Crazily enough, I get to Bradley's arena to cover my area's men's basketball team and they only have three players. So I volunteer my services to the coach (who had to play as well), run back to my car, grab my shoes and play three games over two days against college players and older. For some reason, Anthony Parker (now of the Cavaliers) hogged the ball and took the last shot in a game instead of passing to me for a wide-open 3. How rude of him to do that. He probably cost us a medal...

    Professional 2: An award-winning photographer at our paper occasionally seeks out crazy story ideas. In 2001, he somehow decides he wants to shoot Muhammad Ali, but in order to get permission from his handlers he needs someone to come along to write a story and asks me to do it. As part of our day-long adventure at his home in SW Michigan, Ali informs me he might be my daddy (I had just said he and my mom were born in the same state the same year) and we also get in the ring together. It's part of his schtick, I suppose, but he allows me to put my boxing glove on his nose so the photog can get a picture. Is it OK to admit that, even though he was 59 and I knew he wouldn't touch me, I was a little intimidated when he got in the ring and fired a few combinations into the air? Hearing "Rocky's Theme" at ear-splitting levels while he stuck and move didn't calm me.

    So, do I pass the BB Bobcat audition?
     
  3. albert77

    albert77 Well-Known Member

    If you exclude the wife and kids, I'd say one of the coolest things I've ever done was last summer when my wife and I were in Puerto Rico for a two-week vacation that our kids teamed up to give us. We hiked up to La Mina Falls in the El Yunque rain forest and I managed to work my way under the falls themselves. An absolutely unbelievable experience.

    Another joyful day (night) was the first time I was able to sleep on my side (my normal sleeping position), nearly three months after triple-bypass surgery. Until then I had to sleep on my back because it hurt too much to lie any other way.

    Getting running water back on five days after Hurricane Katrina was a pretty emotional experience (my wife cried). First real sign that we might eventually get back to normal.

    I got to go cover the Super Bowl in 1986, when the Bears bitchslapped the Patriots. That was a very memorable day.

    I'm sure there have been many others. When you get to my age (mid-50s), you have a lot of good days and bad days. I like the good days a lot better.
     
  4. copperpot

    copperpot Well-Known Member

    My story starts out sad, but it gets happy. In August of 2007, I was home at my parents'. My brother was also there with his family. I was sitting out on the porch and my brother joined me and asked what I was thinking about. I told him that my sister-in-law had recently arranged for a couple to bring a chimp to her BF's birthday party -- these people apparently rent the chimp out, and her BF loved chimps, so it was the best present ever. The chimp swung from his arm, sat on people's laps, ran around the room. I told my brother that I'd just been thinking of how cool it would be if my husband got a sheepdog to come to my next party, because I loved sheepdogs.

    He smiled. "I'm glad you're not thinking about anything serious like I am."

    Four days later, he committed suicide.

    When my birthday rolled around that year, it was a really, really tough day. My brother had always made a big deal out of my birthday. When I turned 16, he came home from college for the weekend to surprise me. He visited me in college for my 21st and took me to New York City. There was a huge void without him there.

    We had friends and family over and ordered pizza and wings. When the doorbell rang, I assumed the food had arrived. I can never quite capture the surprise and elation I felt when instead I saw a big sheepdog ambling down the hallway toward me.

    I felt a real connection to my brother, and just as importantly, my sister and my parents and I had so much fun, laughing as this big dog charged through the house. It was the first time we had shared such a light-hearted experience since my brother died. The owners, I found out later, had been a little skeptical when my husband approached them with the idea, but I'll be forever grateful that they decided to go through with it.
     
  5. Rusty Shackleford

    Rusty Shackleford Active Member

    I saw this thread some time ago and it got me to thinking. I just don't know if I have a 'best' day. Of course I've had many very good days, but none of them really stands out as a 'best'. I've taken some great trips, been to some wild parties, won a few times. But I can't look back for sure and say that any of those are 'best.' This is a very difficult question, or can be anyway.
     
  6. BB Bobcat

    BB Bobcat Active Member

    It wouldn't be a very interesting thread if the question was easy. :)
     
  7. expendable

    expendable Well-Known Member

    Rusty, I have nothing to add except to say that when I joined this site, I was going to use "Rusty Shackleford" as my handle, except you beat me to it. "Dale Gribble" would've blown my cover.
     
  8. I can't beleive no one's best day has been the time they drilled their neighbor in the ass or two days later sent them some gift-wrapped shit in a box.
    What? The? Hell?

    Alex, I'll take Fail for $200.
     
  9. Rusty Shackleford

    Rusty Shackleford Active Member

    That's funny. I don't know why I picked this name. Guess I was watching KOTH at the time.
     
  10. nmmetsfan

    nmmetsfan Active Member

    Two days stick out for me. To understand why they were important you have to know a little metsfan history.

    My mother wasn't much of a mother, so I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. I was really close with my grandfather, and he was a huge baseball fan who grew up in Freeport, NY. He liked the Dodgers until they moved to LA, then adopted the Mets.

    My deep love for the game stems from all the times we would sit and talk about baseball, and the Mets. We spent a lot of time together in October of 86 as we rooted the Mets to the title. Were equally heartbroken when the team of his youth knocked off our Mets in the NLCS in 88.

    He died of cancer in 1990, and to this day a death hasn't hit me harder. That leads to my two best days (non-obvious division). The first was my first big-league game as a teen (I grew up in a state without a big-league club). Was in the stands for the Colorado Rockies' first-ever home game at Mile High Stadium. I remember watching Eric Young lead off the bottom of the 1st with a HR and the feeling the emotion of the crowd of 80,000+. The Rockies would knock off the Expos and I couldn't wipe the grin off my face for weeks.

    The second was when I covered my first big-league game. Walking into Kauffman Stadium, going out on the field during BP, talking with the players, I kept thinking about my grandfather and how proud he must have been looking down on me. It was a feeling I can't quite describe, and to this day it makes me smile. It took everything inside me to focus on the job at hand and I got through it without acting like too much of a bumbling fool, I think.
     
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