Awkward or Special?

You know those people.  Sometimes they're tall, and when they walk their shoulders have to jut forward to keep balance.  Like their shoulders are rotating on an entirely different body than their waists.  Or that they're pushing their shoulders through some sort of thick jelly, while they're waists are just trotting along.  There are also those average sized people that aren't ridiculously fat, but aren't particularly skinny either.  And there are those that just look lost... all the time.

I guess it would be more appropriate to say 'Awkward or Special or Foreign'.  Cuz when I'm interacting with somebody that doesn't speak great English, the first decision I have to make is rather they are foreign or special.

Anyway.

I play volleyball every Tuesday with the 'good people' at my sports club.  Apparently, Thursdays are for people wanting to play less pretty, back yard barbecue volleyball.  Every once in a while, we get someone who mistakenly shows up to play with the big dogs.  They usually pick up on the cues that they're just not as good as us, and they hop out after a game or two.

Then Tuesday happened.  This massive guy (tall more than wide) was hovering around the edge of the court for most of our first game.  We usually let people come and go in the middle of the game, but people also just like to watch us, so we don't really ask people to join.  They can if they want to.  He hopped in at the beginning of the 2nd game.

In just a few short minutes, it goes all daddy-hit-mommy silent and we are all giving each other the 'what the fuck can we do' face behind his back.  He's slow.  He didn't understand the concept of a setter position.  One time he took a swing, missed it, and the ball hit him in the head.  We've got real eastern Europeans here trying to draw blood, and there's just no room for somebody who doesn't help at all.

But nobody said anything.  And nobody confronted him.  I pray that we were all thinking the same thing.  We weren't sure if he was special or not.  At least that speaks to the kindness of strangers, that they'd be happy to let somebody ruin their extremely competitive game just to give somebody a chance to feel connected and to be a part of something.  But then I wonder, what if he wasn't special?  Is that even worse?

Not really related at all, just hilarious.

Watch me try to shoot a basketball, and you could write this whole post about me,
~RoB