Last Wednesday, I was standing in a San Antonio airport gift shop, desperately trying to find just the right San Antonio Spurs merchandise to buy. I had just spent a week with some of my closest friends that I’ve only met twice in person.

This trip was the fourth time I’ve been to San Antonio in my life and all for very different reasons. I have a mystical bond with SA that doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never lived anywhere near there, I don’t have any relatives that live there and it’s just some random city in the middle of Texas. The reason I have a connection with SA starts with my love of the San Antonio Spurs, but why I like them doesn’t make much sense either. The reason why I like the Spurs is pretty boring, but I need to briefly explain how I started liking them.

As does every student in high school, I was a teenager looking for an identity. I was 6’1 and rail skinny, so of course my dad chose to put me in basketball.

I my sophomore year I played on the B team, but also got some reps on the A team. I was also the fastest guy on the team, so for a brief moment in my life, I reached my athletic peak. Summer came, and the way I stayed in shape in the same shape was shooting hoops in my driveway for 20 minutes or so a couple of times a week.

I knew that junior year would be more competitive, so I was ready for it. At the very least, I was the fastest guy on the team last year, so I would breeze through the tryouts, right? The first thing they did for tryouts was sprints, and that summer of little activity prepared me to, not only limp to the finish line, but deposit my breakfast into the locker room toilet. The sprint to the toilet was the fastest I had sprinted all day.

To no one’s surprise, I didn’t make the team my junior year. Since I decided that my career wouldn’t be in the NBA, I combined my knowledge of basketball with my love of watching TV and started watching the NBA. When you live in South Dakota, there are home team NBA teams to cheer for. Just like my malleable self-identity, I was going through a trial period of deciding on who my team was. The closest team to me was the Minnesota Timberwolves, but they didn’t exist quite yet, and they sucked when they first started anyways.

The good teams at the time were the Lakers, Celtics, and Pistons. I learned to hate the Lakers and the Celtics and the Pistons were cool, because they were “Bad Boys”, but I needed a team that wasn’t like the others. I wanted to be different from the crowd.

The answer to my new favorite team was an article I read in Sports Illustrated (which was the Bible of sports back then), about a 7 foot 1, skinny, absolutely ripped, left-handed phenom that played four years for the Naval Academy, named David Robinson. He was drafted by the San Antonio Spurs, but instead of going to the NBA right away, he served two additional years for the Navy. The thing that sold me on him and the Spurs was his first game against the Lakers. He blocked Magic to save the game and he all of sudden became my guy and my favorite team.

He turned around a failing franchise that was flailing. More than that, he embraced the city and the team and stayed there his whole career. I’ve later come to find out that the Spurs were established in 1973, the exact same year I was established. No wonder I identify with the Spurs. Now I had to understand what was so special about San Antonio the city. So on a whim, I decided that to go there and find a job and live there. I never got one, and never moved there, but there was just something special about the place to me.

Then I saw the movie about the Alamo. A group of 200 ragtag non-soldiers and misfits were stationed at the Alamo. The powerful Mexican Army was moving to take the Western part of North America, and the Alamo was just a little zit in their way of clear skin domination. That group of hicks stood up the to Mexican Army for 13 days before succumbing, but they bought enough time for Sam Houston to get the troups to wipe out the Mexican Army and preserve the Western United States. If not for them, the US would be much smaller now.

I identify with the Alamoians and the best San Antonio Spurs teams, because I am also very defensive. But mostly, because I have a little army of bitterlings that are trying to fight against happiness and joy taking over the world.

The world is filled with a diverse number of emotions, tastes, and feelings that are given credibility, safe spaces, and the freedom to live how they want. Bitterness is derided by all other emotions, attacked from all sides.

In the flavor metaverse, most people call it their least favorite, especially when compared to sweet, salty, or sour. In the emotion industry, it is the least used and most despised, even over sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. Bitterness didn’t even make it into Inside Out, which is a tragedy (the hope is that it will be in the sequel, but I’m not counting on it). Many think that bitterness is the emotion that you create yourself, which is true and the best thing about it.

As the world’s most famous advocate for bitterness, I am like the defenders of the Alamo, standing here with my small army of bitternetters, trying to defend bitterness, and sacrificing everything to preserve the Western United Emotion of Bitterness against a much stronger army of emotions like Happiness, Contentment, Joy and Pride.

We must stand divided or die united.

ARRRGGGHHHHHHHHH

Bitter Remember the Alamo’s Ben