The McBournie Minute: I am past my prime

Posted on March 3, 2008
Filed Under McBournie Minute | 1 Comment |

There was a time when I was a U.S. Olympic hopeful, my event: drinking. I would practice for hours and hours on an almost daily basis. I was good–really good. It didn’t matter if I practiced at home or at a bar. Often it was sometimes both. Nor did it matter what I and my teammates drank because we were pretty diverse in our tastes.

However, those days are over.

This past weekend, Bryan Schools came to hang out with me, and as always, we began to try to kill our livers the only way we know how. Friday night we drank gin and tonic and we had nearly the whole handle in a matter of hours. Not surprisingly, the end of the night got rather hazy for us both, but I apparently talked to Rick Snee on the phone for ten minutes. (See? We don’t just write together.) He didn’t understand a word of it.

Of course, the next day was rather gruesome. However, there was a kink in our plans. We had drank gin and tonic to avoid hangovers or to at least hasten the recovery time. Here it is, three days later, and I still have a headache. This would have never happened when I was in my prime. I could bounce back in 24 hours or less.

But now, it seems age is beginning to take hold, and I just can’t recover like I used to. I am certain now that all there is left to do is suffer the fate of most retired athletes: sit around swilling and thinking about the glory days. I will likely confine myself to a nostalgia-laden binge and drunkenly rant to anyone who will listen about how good I was at drinking.

Hopefully, the money I have made from my career and my celebrity status will allow me to cash in a bit. Maybe I can sell my own grill or start my own restaurant. I can probably look forward to a few endorsement deals (“Hi, I’m Bryan McBournie, and when I’ve got a huge headache, I turn the one-two punch of Tylenol and Gatorade.”) and if I am lucky, I may end up as a color commentator on a television network show covering the sport I love.

Thanks for the memories.

Written by Bryan McBournie