Team: 2-3; Public Humiliation: 5-0

Six weeks ago, one of my engineers called me. I was a little nervous--he is one of my engineers who I never talk to (although there was that one night I went out with him and some other people, and got so incredibly drunk that I couldn't remember where I lived to give him directions to get home. I was so mortified I never really talked to him again). The first question was work related (blah blah blah), the second was personal. He wanted me to play on our team's coed, intramural basketball team. He listed the other engineers on our team...the names alone were enough to make me say yes. They are the pretty-boy engineers who should be models -- beautiful faces, tight bodies, and tall tall tall -- something that you rarely see in the engineering world. And in that brief moment, I thought "This is a great opportunity to get hot and sweaty with cute boys, and "accidentally" touch them inappropriately. I will slap their asses left and right."

After I hung up the phone, the realization of what I had agreed to do sunk in:

1. I had not played basketball in over two years, not since the days when Tom, Garry, and I used to go to The Field House and play intensely crazy basketball.
2. I stopped exercising right before Thanksgiving, after my volleyball team kicked ass in the coed intramural league. I am the size of a small house, with a drooping back porch and a bad paint job.
3. Being tall does not mean you are a good basketball player or athlete. It just means that you are freakishly tall, and people are constantly asking you if you played basketball in high school or college.
4. I don't run.
5. I can't shoot.
6. They all think I'm weird.

The first game was a nightmare. The other girl on our team couldn't make it, so I had to play the entire game. Instead of looking cute and glistening like other girls do, I turned a mottled red and ran like an elephant for an hour. One of the guys threw a pass at me -- directly at my head, that is. It hurt but it was so funny that I started laughing. The guy who threw it stopped the game to see if I was all right, which made things worse. I didn't shoot once. We lost that game. I also bruised my toe so badly that I couldn't wear shoes for a week, had to go to the doctor, and will loose my toenail. But I was hardcore -- I wrapped the toe for our following game and played through the pain.

Since then, we have won 2 of our 5 games. I have only attempted to shoot three times. I missed all three. In high school (and with Tom and Garry) I was used to playing the post position, and I scored points for my team. My team now doesn't have any game plans, so I run around like a moron, just trying to stay out of my teammates' way. I pray that they do not pass me the ball. I like to say that I am their defensive weapon, but I am just fat and slow and old. Tonight, my pants kept falling down so I flashed all my engineers. So now I am fat and slow and old and have a big, fat, white butt that they have seen. I told them tonight that my new strategy was just to pass out on the court: as long as I am on the court and not out of bounds, that would technically meet the requirement of one female on the court at all times.

Essentially, I have joined a basketball team to be with hot engineers, but every week I am showing up to publicly humiliate myself. And it hasn't changed things much, they still don't talk to me on or off the court. When they do, they ask generic questions and I make some dumb remark that only people who know me would find funny. And I talk in my six-year-old voice all the time. I have become a social reject. And, once again, the hot guys are using me just for my body.