WE-E-E-LL LA-DE-FREAKIN'-DA: With all the media attention on steroids and PEDs in the past few days, a friend of mine from high school and I took a trip down memory lane together. It’s a story that might not work as well in written form, but I’ll give it a try.
On my high school basketball team there were a couple of guys who were fairly serious druggies. Somehow the coach learned about that. One time he gathered all of us in the locker room before an away game to give us the “don’t do drugs” speech. Picture the typical high school “away” locker room, but even a little more depressing than usual – fluorescent lights, rough cement on the floor, ancient wood benches, a pervasive odor of mildew and sweat, and a trickle of water coming down one wall where there was a crack.
The coach’s heart was clearly in the right place, but he was out of his comfort zone on this subject and his oration skills … left a little to be desired. Picture Chris Farley as motivational speaker Matt Foley on Saturday Night Live.
Anyway, our coach got very fired up and lost his composure as he was yelling at us not to do drugs. The climax of his speech was supposed to be an exhortation that under no circumstances were we even to try hallucinogenics. But that word, admittedly difficult to pronounce in the heat of the moment, proved too much for the man. He ended up saying something like “Hah-Goose-Ah-La-Netics”.
There was dead silence in the locker room for a moment. Then a guard on the JV could not help himself and started to giggle. Within a moment, the entire team was laughing.
I crossed paths with a teammate from that team a few years ago and the word “Hah-Goose-Ah-La-Netics” had us in stitches years after the fact.
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