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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Holiday giving...it's the thought that counts!
Merry Christmas...I guess I get to be a dorky holiday blogger guy. This is my favorite time of year: the corny music, lights, decorations and the excessive eating and drinking all around. But most importantly, as a basketball player in Europe, it is about the halfway point in the season and one of our only breaks that will last longer than one day.
The one thing I do not like about Christmas is the overdose of stress that comes with looking for gifts. I understand it gives parents an excuse to spoil their children, but the fighting through crowds in various shopping centers and malls, finding the right stuff, making sure you get something for everyone, and making sure you don't buy the same thing two Christmases in a row for somebody - my Aunt Sue's problem, as you'll recall from a previous blog - can all be a little much.
Fortunately, I avoid some of this pressure because my best friend Mike and I have a long-standing agreement to not exchange Christmas presents. Actually, it's more like a gift-giving stalemate that resulted from an incident back in Christmas 2002, the last time either one of us bought the other a gift. My gift to him in 2002 was the lovely glass colored ball thermometer pictured here. (I didn't know how to explain it and disregard the Chinese, unless it says "Send money to Adam"!)
First, as background information, you should know that this guy Mike is some kind of gift glutton. He has wiggled his way into my parents' good graces over the years to the point that the usual 50-50 split of family gifts with my brother and I has now been chopped into thirds. Even though he was already hogging gifts from parents who are not his, Mike still had the audacity to contend that my Christmas 2002 present to him, part of our annual exchange until then, didn't actually count as a gift because it replaced something I broke. Two months earlier I had knocked a table-top thermometer he owned off a shelf during a pillow fight with a girl at our university. Sounds interesting, I know, but in fact I merely misfired a pillow at some college girl who was infringing on the sacred territory of a male dormitory room. (My Roanne teammates will certainly find it quite believable that I missed an easy target from short range, but I blame it on a slight breeze coming into the room and a poorly-weighted feather pillow.)
Anyway, Mike couldn't have really expected me to buy him a new thermometer, since they were tough to get that year (something to do with a thermometer shortage in the Western Hemisphere). Later, when I found the glass Chinese thermometer, I thought it was a great gift. Mike, however, claimed that it was not really a gift, but rather an obligatory replacement for the thermometer I broke. He insisted that I was in default of our annual Christmas gift exchange.
To this day, Mike is holding me accountable for a gift in 2002. He bought me a shirt that year, and he won't buy me another gift until I make up for the gift deficit. Of course, I won't buy him any more gifts because he refuses to buy me any and because of the shaky treatment I received when I gave him the thermometer. The stalemate lives on.
As for this Christmas, we would like to give Chorale Roanne fans the gift of a win in Belgrade against Partizan this week. Our earlier loss to Partizan at home might mean we really owe our fans a win. So, like Mike's thermometer, it might not really be considered a gift. Either way, we hope for a win to make Christmas a little brighter for our fans and ourselves. Most people had already counted Roanne out of the Euroleague after a five-game losing streak, but we have bounced back nicely, with two straight wins. When we play Partizan in Belgrade this Wednesday, both of our teams will be 3-5. We are both fighting for fifth place. The first five places in each group are guaranteed a spot in the Top 16, so this is essentially a playoff game for both teams.
No matter what happens Wednesday, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
POSTED BY
Adam Hess- Roanne, France
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