B is for Bladding and Basketball

You might be asking yourself what is bladding? The origin of bladding is disputed great but, all I know it came from Ryan’s older brother when he was Arkansas going to school. It is the act of doing something completely disgusting, stupid, and dangerous at the same time. All the ingredients you need to have a fun time in Marshalltown. It is an activity that if you knew what it was before hand you would never do it. But once you have done it, you find yourself bragging to others that you have! There are three rules to bladding:

One… You have to take at least one person who has never gone bladding before.
Two… Once everyone agrees to bladd there is no backing out, far worse things will happen if you do.
Three.. You cannot tell anyone or talk about what bladding is.

There are several bladding stories that we have but due to the three rules I can not share them with you. But if you have never done it before and wondering if you should go. DO IT! It is an absolute blast! I have countless stories that would make anyone cry with laughter because of the fun we had in Marshalltown bladding.

As for Basketball…

What is it about basketball that makes everyone want to join in or watch in the backyard? Countless nights when everyone spends the night at my house, which was in town right across the street to a park and school, we got board around midnight and then someone suggested basketball and we all go storming out to my backyard. We set up lights including lamps or anything we could find to have some lights on the court.

We wouldn’t really play a team game, although that happened every once in while. But mostly we played 21. It is a game where there are no teams just you against everyone else being the first person to score exactly 21 points. Two points for each basket you made, and then one point for each free through you made. There are no three pointers. If you tip someone in (meaning catching the rebound and shooting without hitting the ground) they go down to zero, and you get two points. It was a really fun game, with a lot of laughter and messing around. The people who couldn’t play basketball much tend to shoot from the outside and never drove towards the basket. There were times when you think someone was going to win and then they get tipped in and they go back to zero.

At times there would be 12 guys standing under the hoop while the 13th guy shoots his free-throw. Some nights we would play for 3 hours straight, and at the end of the game, we knew we would get a good night sleep that night.

One of the things that we tend to do was try to mess up the person shooting the free throw. This was done with many different methods. From yelling when the ball was soon to be released to jumping up and down trying to break the concentration of the shooter.

Sam was the master of this method. He was and average athlete in high school but he knew how to distract you from shooting that basketball. There would be several times where you look to the basket, bounce the ball a couple of times, get ready to aim and you look down and there it is. Sam’s white butt staring right in front of you. By then you realize you are still shooting the ball and try to adjust at the last minute but it is too late, the shoot goes way foul and someone most likely rebounds the ball and tips you in. This was Sam’s genesis at work. He would put that perfect move on you at the perfect time. There would be times where instead of mooning you he would lift up his shirt and scream, “CHESTICLES!” Sam was a really white person and when that shirt went up it was like another lamp was turned on the court.

(Side note)
Chesticles was something I came up with when I was a freshman in high school. Instead of calling guy’s chest, man boobs. I would call them chesticles, coming from a combination male genitalia and the word chest. This was something only males can have since there is no other name for a male’s chest.

The distraction came in many forms on the court mooning, lifting up your shirt, and screaming some funny word as in “buttocks”. Basketball was never about winning in Iowa, it was more about, like everything else we did, doing something fun.

A good rule of thumb is to remember you don’t always have to be drunk in Iowa to have fun, no matter how impossible that sounds. My friends and I did all this crazy stuff without a single drop of alcohol or a puff of drugs.

I guess we thought since did all those stupid and crazy stuff sober, just thing how dangerous it would be if we were drunk….

My memories,
Kalgon58