Chapter 16: Amazons Attack!!!

I know I said that this Denny’s epic would only be a week long. But with the response I have been getting from this I’ve decided that instead of it being a week long that it will end “not today.” There are a few good stories to tell still, like today’s. So, get to your favorite booth, order up a French Slam and coffee, light up a hand-rolled smoke, and let’s stay at Denny’s long after it was time to leave.

***

It was a Wednesday after a production in the Winter 2003 semester. Naturally it was time to go to Denny’s.

RJ and I went inside and waited for a table. There was a group of three or four good-looking women waiting in front of us.

“Hey, you guys write for the newspaper, don’t you?”

Being single guys at the time our natural response was something along the lines of a smooth, yet slowly delivered “Why yes…we are.”

“Why don’t you guys ever write anything about us?”
“Yeah, we go to State!”

It would appear that the women that were talking to us were not just women. Oh no. They were Amazons who played volleyball at SC4. That might not sound like much, but you have to realize that SC4 Girls Volleyball is a state qualifying team and quite possibly winners of multiple championships.

Obviously since we were the two guys in charge of the newspaper we would have entire spreads of the ESG dedicated to them, right?

Nope.

Trust me, it wasn’t like we didn’t want to. I say this for myself but I also believe I can say this on behalf of RJ when I say we weren’t that into sports. The first semester of that year we never covered sports for various reasons. Mr. Lusk even said in an issue critique “Is it the goal this year not to cover sports?” Turmoil ensued in the latter part of the Fall 2002 semester and even when we were doing pretty good getting issues out in Winter 2003 we still weren’t doing anything. We had good Sports Editor but he didn’t write much beyond national sports coverage at the time.

Even if we didn’t write about sports we never had any problems except for Lusk’s critiques.

That is, until that night.

RJ and I were speechless. We grasped for words. I’m a former wrestler and RJ breaks heavy drumsticks whenever he gets behind his set. Yet we were left quivering before these women who could easily rip off our heads and serve them to open a match.

Naturally we did the only thing possible. Instead of being men and saying “We’re sorry and we’ll cover your games in the future” we made up a 110% pure B.S. excuse involving us saying we saw someone we knew at one of the tables and booked it to a section no athlete would ever go; that being the smoking section. Granted, no athlete who cares to stay in shape should go to Denny’s. But if this blog and regular attendance at Denny’s is proof of anything it is that unbelievable things happen there a lot.

We didn’t do any stories on them that semester. That’s because they play in the Fall. I rectified this during my tenure primarily because I love life and do not care to shuffle off this mortal coil yet.

(As we speak, Freudian analysts are picking apart that last paragraph for the “castration anxiety” I am obviously hiding.)

I want to use the excuse that “we were young and just learning the newspaper” and in reality that is only partially true. The other excuse is that there is no excuse. Really, we should have been covering the volleyball team.

I wish that was the only time I ran into women that have seething anger towards RJ and I. I would be very extremely wrong.

***

Stay tuned for Monday as the epic continues.