XVII

It was about 6 in the morning and it was dead so I found myself cruising the strip looking for a flag. Save Sunday mornings the hours of 5-7am are usually the slowest of the day. Just south of MGM I drove by three college aged guys all of which were carrying a yard margarita that apparently require straws measuring a yard and a half. Two of them are frantically waiving me down. These are my guys for sure.

I pull over and all three of them get in the back. As soon as they got in it was pretty obvious what these three had been partying pretty hard all night. And I dont mean drinking all night about ready to puke party, I mean bright eyed, bushy tailed and having way to much energy at 6am party.

What's goin on guys? Where we heading?

Apparently they had time to figure out exactly where they were going while waiting for a cab because one of them immedietly came back with:

We need to go to a TOYS "R" US...Is there a TOYS "R" US near here?

....Not to far but Im sure they are not open yet. They probably dont open until 9 at the earliest. Probably 10.

They were a little bumbed I gathered and after talking amongst themselves for a second:

Thats ok man, just take us to our hotel then.

..and which hotel might that be?

Oh sorry. The Flamingo.

Now, I dont know why I let that slide right away but we didnt get 100ft before I asked:

Hey- Can I ask you guys a question?

Sure

What do three party animals such as yourselves need to get at TOYS "R" US at 6 in the morning?

A Basketball. We really feel like playing some hoops right now.

Right. That makes sense.

Remember kids, say no to drugs.

We all kinda had a laugh about it and a minute later it dawned on me:

Well, if all you needed was a basketball Im sure Walmart has them. They're open.

After all I needed to salvage this ride, these guys were going less than a mile to the Flamingo.

So they loved that idea. All of a sudden I'm the coolest cab driver in the world because I knew that Walmart was open.

We cruised to the Walmart on Tropicana & Pecos. Along the way they were asking if I knew somewhere they could play nearby. I told them I could take them up the University, which is on the way back to the strip anyway and having gone to school there I knew that there is a perfect spot on campus.

We get to Walmart and I drop them off at the front door.

Hey you guys might want to leave the margaritas here

Nah...they wont care

So I waited outside for about ten minutes with the meter running. Then the three of them walked out carrying a basketball, a football, three yard margaritas and three yard and a half margarita straws. Nice.

As we were are on the way to campus I think it dawned on them that they only had three guys and none of them seemed down to play HORSE or 21, so the subject turned to them trying to talk me into parking the cab and playing ball with them for an hour or so. I resisted. After all im out here working. Trying to earn a living, not box-out some cokeheads.

C'mon man....we will pay you. ....you leave the meter on and we'll pay you whatever that is plus fifty bucks.

Fuckin A, not a bad deal, but I countered:

I have a better idea, why dont you just give me a 100 bucks right now, Ill turn the meter off altogether, we'll play for an hour and then Ill take you home.

I felt like a hooker.

They agreed. After all it's basically costing them the same. Plus this way, there is no confusion later, if you know what I mean.

So we get to the courts on campus and the three amigos made sure to put their margaritas under a tree...in the shade. I think because I was the big tall guy (6'3" 300) they paired me with the short skinny guy (~5'6" 160). I thought before about just dishing the rock a lot and shinning glass...ya know, just let the other guy take most of the shots and stuff. But considering my teamate I realized I might have to go Shaq-Fu and just take the game over myself. After all, I played some ball back in the day.

It didnt take long after we started playing for me to realize that was exactly what I was going to have to do. My guy had no skillz whatsoever, lost the dribble the first three times he had it and his defense looked something like the Macarenna. Perhaps that was the margarita.

We lost the first game by a large margin. In between games I told my boy just to pass the ball to me in the post, and stay in the lane on defense and make them hit shots. ...and that seemed to work. We won the second game. My size was too much for those guys under the basket and my boy actually was making some shots. So our inside>outside game was all of a sudden, working brilliantly.

After the second game our oppenents devised a plan to simply hack the shit out of me. The first couple times I just called foul and let it go. After all, they gave me a hundo to play basketball with them. They got more intense with it after that and I decided I was going to back off before It escalated. So I just took jumpers the rest of the time and my boy tried taking it to the rack just about every time he had it making me laugh in the process. We lost the last three games.


I took them back to the Flamingo and then went home and showered.


I'd have to say this was one of my more interesting rides. I mean you cant make this shit up.