The Absolute Most Impressive Thing You Can Do Athletically Is Make A Basket At The Carnival
It is officially carnival season in Chicago across the world. Now, I actually hate carnivals and street fests in Chicago as an adult. They block traffic. They have that fucking ticket currency system often times where you always end up leaving with schrute bucks in your pocket because every item is priced oddly and you can never get to exactly 10 or 20 tickets worth of food and drinks. As a kid though...they're great. Young Chief used to love going to Swedish Days and Scare Crow Fest is the Fox Valley back in the day. You get dropped off, you meet your little shit head buddies at a place you discussed on the house phone two hours earlier, and you go looking for good clean knucklehead trouble without adult supervision and if you make eye contact with Sarah from history well now you're really getting somewhere.
You'll be in line for the giant drop and you'll hear something cutting through the noise in the distance. In between the laughter, the kids screaming from the tea cups, and the bell getting rung by the hammer game you hear a familiar 'whop' sound every couple of seconds. You look over your shoulder and coming through the crowd like Moses is...
You see the kid dribbling the ball he won. Some $5 rubber unlicensed Charlotte Hornets ball bouncing in his right hand and he's got Sarah from English in his left hand. You can't even get mad at him. He earned it. He took a warped and warn ball and shot it threw an egg shaped rim that is the size of a cereal bowl. Those things are IMPOSSIBLE to make. You have to shoot the ball with such a high arc that it almost gets pulled into orbit and then it has to come straight down because you couldn't fit the tickets it cost to play on either side of the ball and still have it go in. Anyone can swing a hammer. Anyone can shoot the star out with that little bb gun that is chained to the table so you don't go a shooting spree(?). If you made one of those shots and came home with prize ball your dad should take the family photos off the mantle and put the basketball on display there instead. This is the top feat you can do. I am not sure Steph Curry could hit one with three attempts for 5 tickets. I have enough integrity to admit that I never made a basket at the carnival in my entire life and that Sarah from English wanted nothing to do with me and no girls did until I was like 19.