HONEST SELF-ANALYSIS

Pudgy, slow, lazy, Not a good personal ad, Yet sadly, the truth.

–INTROSPECTIVE HAIKU, JOEL COHEN, FREQUENT SELF-QUOTING AUTHOR

I'm not fast, but I am lazy.

I'd like to deal with these one at a time, since I am too lazy to deal with them both at the same time.

First, let's explore my laziness. I'm so lazy that before writing this book, I googled "how many pages does a book have to be." The answer suggested the bare minimum is forty thousand words. This book is not forty thousand words. Therefore, it may not even be a book; you may be reading a brochure, a flyer, or a long-winded fortune cookie. However, what you are holding is with certainty the product of a lazy person.

If you aren't convinced yet, let me tell you that I have an electric toothbrush, a product meant for people too lazy to move their hand in small circles for thirty seconds. I bought an electric toothbrush to avoid that torture and then, when the battery ran out, I was too lazy to reach over and place it in the small holder that recharges it. This extreme level of sloth is exactly why now, every night, I find myself moving my hand in small circles for thirty seconds. I'm so lazy I've chosen to do the "work" of brushing my teeth just so I can avoid doing the "work" of plugging in my toothbrush.

I am also not fast. Not even close. Not even close to close. I'm almost the opposite of fast. (If only there was a word for the opposite of fast — it would come in so handy right now.)

I haven't always been not-fast. There was a time where I would even have described myself as "speedy." In fact, when I was younger, I was the fastest runner in my grade school class.

Now, this section is called "Honest Self-Analysis," so let me be up-front about the fact that my grade school class was made up of only six people — four boys and two girls. You might think that's a very small class until I tell you that my grade school was a Yiddish language school in Calgary, Canada. Now you're thinking, "They managed to find six people for that?!"

As fast as I was in my tiny class at the I. L. Peretz School, I couldn't keep reality at bay forever. While the list of Yiddish-speaking Canadian sprinters is long and distinguished, I was about to learn that I would not join the esteemed ranks of Gordy "Lightning" Abramowitz and the great Doug "Flash" Mendelson.

My wake-up call came when I left this little academic shtetl and entered the public school system for grade seven. There, at John Ware Junior High, I went out for the track team and returned humiliated.

It seems that when you expand your class size beyond six, and beyond the children of parents who believed Yiddish was a necessary tool for success in the twentieth century, athletic competition becomes, well, competitive.

That first track practice at John Ware gave me a chance to study the backs of my new classmates as they sped past me. I also got to see their sides as they sped past me for a second time. Then, I watched them in profile as they passed me for the third and fourth times. It was very clear — I was a slow runner, and with all this watching my peers, a bit of a stalker. At the Peretz School, I thought I was the rabbit that greyhounds chase at the dog track. At John Ware, I learned I'm more like the guy who carries a scoop and picks up after the dogs when the race is done.

Once I came to terms with my lack of running aptitude, I began to look for other sports I could also be bad at. Luckily, I found several. Basketball — horrible! Football — below average! Jai alai — never tried it, but bet on it once in Tijuana before I realized it was fixed. Yes, I was even bad at betting on sports.

Aside from one forgettable season playing Little League Baseball, the only organized sport I played, and still play regularly, is ice hockey. When I describe this as organized I mean I play in a league that has games starting at ten thirty Sunday night and ending Monday morning. To give you a sense of the quality of play, the team I'm on started in the silver level, then dropped to the bronze level, and now the league is desperately searching for a metal less valuable than bronze so they can create a new tier worthy of our play. (My guess: It will be tin or possibly rust.)

Though I play hockey regularly, I still suck at it. I've been playing for more than forty years, and I clearly peaked the very first time I put on skates. As a proud Canadian, being a bad hockey player is a problem. Even now, in my league in Los Angeles, I try to hide that I'm Canadian so my hockey ineptitude won't reflect poorly on my homeland. In spirit, it's a very patriotic act. I don't know if anyone has ever been given the Order of Canada for denying they are Canadian, but this may merit serious consideration. Please write your local member of Parliament.

As bad as I am, I keep playing hockey because I enjoy it. I know I stink; I just like being out there, and making matters worse, I'm also a little competitive. Not the psycho competitive guy we all know and hate, but competitive enough that I try as hard as I can. The fact that I am trying to play well may come as a shock to my teammates on the Los Angeles Thunder, but it's true.

I know I'm bad at sports, yet I still love sports. I love them as much as I hate exercise. The only exercise I like to do is through sports, because I need the competition to make the physical effort interesting. That very illogical contradiction explains (or doesn't explain) where my head was at in the fall of 2012.

INSPIRATION FOR PERSPIRATION (AND EXPIRATION?)

"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible."

–DOUG LARSON, JOURNALIST

(If this is true, my doofus cousin is on the cusp of doing something awesome! Probably after he finishes "learning" acupuncture by watching YouTube videos.)

In addition to suffering from an allergy to athletics, in 2012, I was also working as a writer on The Simpsons.

If you're not familiar with The Simpsons, Time magazine called it the "greatest television show...