A long time ago my good friend Scott introduced a game to me while we were living across the hall from each other in college. The rules of the game are simple: each participant gives every other participant a challenge that he must complete by the challenger's birthday. The parameters for the challenges are simple, they must not cause harm to the challenged, and they must, in theory, be a good exercise for the challenged. The idea being, that you're pushing a friend to do something that they already should be doing, but are unable to do because a)they don't have the same perspective on their life that you do and don't realize what a help it would be to complete the challenge, or b)they're being a huge vag about doing something they know they should be doing. This all makes sense, it's a way for friends to help each other out and it's a way for guys to give their male friends some advice without coming off like they care too much. The catch to this game is that the price for failing to meet a challenge is high. If you fail your challenge, the person who issued it will be allowed to kick you once (and only once) in the balls.
The potential for challenges is fascinating and in the history of the game (some of it without my involvement) challenges have ranged from "running three times a week" to "be a vegan for a year." To my knowledge only once did someone fail to meet their challenge (it was me - I forgot to go for a run on the very last day of my "run three times a week" challenge). For those who are curious as to the health of my balls, my challenger was lenient and gave me a pass (I'll be honest, I lost a lot of respect for him that day). The game has been dormant for some time now until recently, when I decided to revive it in order to push a friend who I think needed a gentle shove in the direction of betterment. What I failed to consider is that in reviving a game that we'd forgotten about since college I'd opened myself up to having to complete some awful task.
Scott, is a genius however, and did not miss the opportunity to demand that I start a blog and write a new post for every day in September - 30 posts for my 3o birthday, which arrives October 1st. So I'll set out to post something here for each day of this month. And if my history of the "Kicked in the Balls" game holds up, I'll forget to post something on September 30th and Scott will not forget to kick me in the balls. I imagine that even though we've aged significantly since our time in college Scott would relish the opportunity to give me a swift kick in the gonads.
I suppose this is good for me - although I can't say it will be good for anybody who happens to be reading. I wonder if Scott will allow me to post twice in a day and count it as two days, I should probably clarify for the sake of my gennies...Until September 2nd, I remain humbly yours with my balls intact.
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