I wish I was like you, easily amused

When I was a kid, my favorite candy was Warheads. Nobody remembers the Warhead for the sweet lemony flavor. You ate a Warhead because, for some twisted reason, you enjoyed subjecting yourself to the facial contortions the sour taste would cause.

Why is it that that bitter taste in your mouth always overpowers the sweet, savory flavors? This isn’t anything groundbreaking. I’m sure cavemen had the same feelings. This is true for food, relationships, just about everything. I have some very vivid memories of good times. But, the most vivid are always of something bad. Something painful. I can recount with incredible detail when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. But I couldn’t tell you when or how I realized my mom didn’t have cancer anymore. Why is that bitter taste so much stronger than the sweet one?

I went to the Caps game on Saturday. If you’ve ever been to an NHL game, during at least one of the intermissions they let mites or squirts from a local club play for 5-10 minutes. This is the ultimate thrill for a 7 year-old kid. Playing on the same surface as your idols with the entire arena cheering you on. That’s as close as it gets to the scene played over and over again in driveways and basements. Less than 10 seconds to go in overtime, Wesley intercepts the puck at center ice. Five seconds. Splits the defense and is in all alone. 3 seconds. Dekes the goalie out of his pads. He shoots! He SCORES! And the crowd goes wild HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! CAPS WIN! CAPS WIN THE CUP!

Seeing those tykes got me all nostalgic about playing sports when I was a kid. I played just about every sport growing up. Soccer, baseball, basketball, ice hockey. And I can’t remember being on a single losing team. Those were good times. But then, as I thought about it more I realized that, despite all the fondness, the memories most burned into my mind are of losing.

Throughout elementary school my little league team was one of the better teams in our district. We were constantly hitting the 5 run per inning limits and making other kids quit baseball. There were always two other teams that would actually give us a game. One year we won the championship, but I can’t tell you a single thing about that game other than what is in the local newspaper article that is still tacked up on my cork board in my bedroom at my parent’s house. What I can remember is the year after when we lost to that same team. I remember the last play of the game. Bottom of the 6th, I had just scored on a pop fly to make it a two run game. We had runners on 2nd and 3rd. Line drive right beyond the shortstop. Guy on third scores easily. Play over. We need one more run. Then all of a sudden Danny, who was on second comes screaming around 3rd completely ignoring the 3rd base coach’s signal to stop. The left fielder gets to the ball and throws a bull to the catcher. Out at home by a mile, game over.

I can’t remember a single detail of the win the year before, but that moment is crystal clear in my mind. We were Carolina blue that year and we all got a kick out of wearing Carolina blue eye black. And we lost.

My favorite sport has always been ice hockey. It was my best sport growing up and I wish I was still playing. I was never the best player on my team, but always one of the best. Always second or third in goals and assists. In high school the game I remember most was against my home high school senior year. I went to a magnet school on the other side of the county. We had never beaten them and the friends that I had on that team never let me forget it.

This game, we played close the whole way through. We were down 4-3 late in the game and there was a mad scramble in front of our net. Graham, our goalie, tried to cover the puck up to get a whistle, but it somehow squirted out. I was right there and tried to shovel it ever so delicately back into his glove. Just as the puck would have slid under is glove, he picked it up and the puck slid into the net. DAGGER (thanks Steve Buckhantz). 5-3. It didn’t matter that I scored my second goal of the game minutes after that to make it 5-4 and then almost tied it 2 minutes later as the horn sounded. See, if I hadn’t scored on my own goal, we never would have to to try to tie it as the game ended.

That last year was my best year individually, but I can still see myself shoveling that own goal in.

Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of great sports memories as a kid. But for some reason, the painful ones are clearer. Why does that bitter taste overpower the sweet taste? And more importantly, how do you get rid of the bitter taste?