I used to like sports when I was young, because all my joints hadn’t quite calcified yet. I started out in baseball, because they made it extra easy for young, feeble weak children. There is a ball, a bat, and a tee with a ball resting right there for anyone but a failure to hit it. I was told to swing at it like I swung at my younger siblings that I was treating like a pinata, and I would make my parents very happy. If I did well, they could dream of me making the majors someday to pay for their retirement. (Full disclosure, my dreams of my son making the NFL is my retirement plans).

Unfortunately, the tee was always taunting me and the coach basically had to bring the ball and physically tap my bat to the ball, just so they could quickly get to the next kid failure.

Since the only success I had in baseball was outstanding in the field (right field), my parents tried something else. They saw I was taller than the rest of the other kids, so they forced me into basketball. I liked the idea of basketball, because they said travelling was involved, but then they told me it wasn’t like cruises in the Carribbean, or trips to an amusement park, but a rule that you couldn’t take too many steps. That seemed stupid. Don’t they want me to advance to the basket so I could dunk it? But just like in baseball, they had weird rules like the balk and offsides in soccer. I didn’t understand the traveling rule in basketball. At least not until I got much older.

The way that traveling worked was as soon as you stopped dribbling the ball, you couldn’t take more than two in motion steps. If you were standing with the ball, you had to commit to a pivot foot, and once you did, you couldn’t move that one foot. It was like that compass your teachers made you get for third grade math. When you weren’t using it to stab your best friend with when you teacher wasn’t watching, you were instructed to dig the pointy thing into the paper, and it had to stay there. The pencil side could do a 360 around the middle, but once you took your sharpened leg off the ground, you were traveling. Which you know, would have been fine, if you could visit an amusement park that wasn’t lame like Disney.

To this day, I still don’t travel that much, but I’m really good at pivoting. It’s like I always have this insane instinct for pivoting just at the right time. This one time, I had a Honus Wagner rookie card, and someone offered me a Fred Howard baseball card that was in decent condition. And I was like really? Of course, I’ll trade an old, washed-up Hall of Famer from the 60’s that only had 4 cards of this kind ever made. For a Fred Howard card was in literally every pack in the one year he played? Fred Howard was a young healthy rookie that year, and his career stats of 1 win and 5 losses spoke “Hall of Famer” like a megaphone to my instincts. I think I definitely got the better side of that deal, because that Honus Wagner card sold for only $3.12 million.

I pivoted to much greater heights than even I could imagine. Deals like the time I dropped my worthless Apple and Microsoft stock for the much higher potential of Netscape Navigator and MySpace.com. Someday, some people will be punching themselves in the face when they realize I still have my Myspace stock, and they are stuck with their Apple Computer and Microsoft stock.

At least they can keep themselves warm using that paper to wipe their tears while I sit in my super comfortable mahogany couch, watching movies on my Beta Max VCR on my huge 14-inch black and white TV, while playing my Atari 2600 Video Game console.

If only other people had my skills to be able to pivot and change, they would be living the high life like me…

I know you are envious, but take your jealousy somewhere else. I’m going to throw out this stupid “Tesla” Stock and pick up some shares of some truly valuable Bitter Blog stock while I drink your bitter tears. Go cry in your Bitter Friday Giftures…

I’m going to build a lake…

I know you are envious…

And are doing all you can…

I know you would love for me…

Or that some of my black magic…

Sorry to tell you…

You’re going to do a little…

It’s going to keep you…

You might have to…

And take some calculated…

You might even have to do…

The worst of all is learning…

Success like mine doesn’t come without a cost. You just need to be so bitter that you have no idea what success even means.

ARRRGGGGHHHHHHHHH

Bitter Pivoting Ben