The other day I was in Trinity Bellwoods park, playing jacks with my good friend Leonid Brezhnev III (yes, I am name dropping, but guess what? I don’t care.) It is a rather spirited match between two old foes, and once again, I am absolutely trouncing him. Leo has the physical ability to compete at a world class level, but, like all communists, he is severely lacking in heart.
I am in the middle of my turn, already at ninesies, while Leo lags behind at threesies. He is getting frustrated and leaning over the playing area. That’s against the rules so I decide to throw a brushback bounce to clear the area. The ball hits him in the eye and he just freaks right out. He starts in with the name calling, and I get sucked in. I tell him that his grandfather’s vision of spreading communism world wide was short-sighted, and I imply that I engaged in sexual intercourse with his mother. It was childish, but my emotions run high during jacks.
At that point Leo was furious, and looking for any sort of competitive edge. Seeing a jet passing overhead, he bet me 3000 rubles that I couldn’t hit it with the ball. I told him not only will I hit the plane, I’ll catch the ball on the way down. Now, to be honest, I really didn’t think I could do it, but I’ll be damned if I was going to back down at that point.
So up it goes, and to my surprise, the ball smashes through the jet and sends it crashing down to the ground over by Exhibition Place. Still in disbelief, we agree to head over and see what we’ve done, so Leo doubles me on his segway and we are on the way.
Once we arrived at the wreckage, we were amazed to find that there was only one casualty amongst all of the passengers. Then, the rest of them died (most of them due to heart attacks resulting from the shock that only one person died in the crash). Luckily, before they died, they all signed waivers absolving me from any litigation (criminal or civil), which was a godsend.
Anyway, Leo reneged on the bet because I didn’t catch the ball afterward. I told him that the catch wasn’t part of the bet, it was just shit talk, but he was having none of it. Really, I was just happy to avoid being charged with hundreds of counts of murder, so I wasn’t going to get all riled up over a few thousand rubles.
I realise that this all seems hard to believe, so I made sure that Leo got a picture to prove it. Unfortunately I don’t have a scanner, but what I can do is describe it for you. It’s me, wearing blue swim trunks and my old Mats Naslund jersey standing in front of a crashed jet. In the background, you can just make out Godzilla eating Santa Claus. What a day!
Friendly game of jacks
It turns ugly, plane goes down
No Christmas this year