These Hands Are Weapons

I hear you're working on hands and feet this week. That's great, I encourage it, but I want to warn you now that you should not expect much from them. With half of my DNA, walking and using utensils may be the most you can hope for. When it comes to athletics I'm the owner of a large number of 'participant' ribbons, a concept you will probably come to understand all too soon. The thing to know now is that they don't give them out because you have exceptional coordination, aim, ability, or skill. Once I was playing catch with a friend and when I threw the ball back it went about twenty five feet right of him and hit his dog. The fact that I missed him by twenty five feet wasn't really that exceptional, it was more that I actually managed to hit something that was surprising.

On that note, I wanted to update you the athletic component of my pre-bear to-do list. I measured my vertical leap so we'll know what we're up against when it comes to dunking. As it stands my vertical is 27 inches. I was expecting a single digit number, so I was pretty excited about that. Then, just for fun I decided to look at the results of the latest NFL combine where they put prospective draftees through a battery of basic tests. The lowest vertical leap I could find was 28.5 inches. There were a few of them. That made me feel better. Then I saw that they all belonged to Offensive Lineman, and they all weighed more than 300 pounds. I'm an inch and a half short of being able to out jump a bunch of fat guys. You see why I'm telling you to temper your excitement regarding your limbs and appendages.

I figure that I need to get about six inches over the rim in order to stuff the ball in. That leaves me an extra 9.5 inches to go. The program promises 11 to 15 inches, but the program probably works best for people with enough athletic ability to play catch without hitting small animals. It may be no match for me.

Novel - On to chapter 8
Dunking - 9.5 inches to go
French - Voiture = Car