I am Not “The Man”…..

Last night I was stripped of my crown in a brutal and bloody battle. It was like one of the fight scenes from Braveheart where Mel Gibson, as William Wallace, dressed in full regalia with his face painted, runs head long into the enemy line with his broadsword slashing and cutting…….

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t quite like that. It was probably more like George Foreman and Smokin Joe Frazier where the anticipated drawn out battle between the two bruisers ended rather abruptly when Foreman soundly trounced the reigning champion in a quick but decisive battle….

Actually, it probably wasn’t really like that either…..it started with a simple gesture, Lynn opened her beer and handed Tracy the bottle cap…..and the battle began.

Tracy, ever the underdog and knowing what was at stake, looked askance at me, the implied statement being “you’re going down old man….” Quickly, he lined up and launched a nice floater off his thumb….it sailed past the first parking stall and landed smoothly, clattering out to the second stall.

Well, like Mighty Casey, the hero from Leadville, I stepped up, drew back and sailed one out to the second line where it bounced and rolled almost to the third stall. Smugly I sniffed and turned, and, with sure and complete victory in my voice, I said something to the effect of “pretty sure that will do it”….

At this point you could see the anger in his eyes as he admitted he had been outdone….but, knowing he had nothing to lose, and, with his pride, self esteem and the future of all mankind resting on his shoulders Tracy stepped up once again to take a turn…

The crowd grew silent, as all waited with bated breath to see whether this young upstart from the south could knock the king off his throne….quietly and with a quiver in his voice he said, “well here goes”…. And, with a thumb bloodied by his hours and hours of practice and a finger almost too sore to even snap he stepped up to the line and launched an amazing shot…..It was a thing of beauty as it caught an updraft and floated…nay, it levitated towards the sky and drifted as on wings out past the second stall and well into the third parking stall before landing gently and smoothly….at least 40 feet from where it had started….

Well, knowing that a shot like that was going to be tough to beat, but also having supreme confidence in my skills, honed over many, many summers spent emptying and then launching case after case of lucky lager bottle caps….I stepped to the line to take my place in the history books as the supreme bottle cap flicking champion.

I smirked to myself, knowing how crushed this poor guy was going to be once I put him in his place. Knowing he’d probably never recover and would become yet another empty shell of a man, another victim, another wasted soul, destroyed by my amazing skill with a bottle cap…..but wait, could it be? Could this really happen…..

IYes folks, it’s true, like the Mighty Casey, my confidence was to be my undoing. This one Spring evening all my training, all my practice, all my skill failed me as I did the unthinkable…..I foul-flicked what was sure to be the winning cap….it not only didn’t sail across the lot, it bounced off my chin and went afoul in the shrubbery like a badly sliced tee shot……

Humbly and quietly I bowed to the new champion, the new reigning King of the Beer Cap Flickers….Tracy, though an underdog coming in walked away that evening as The Man…..