This is the direct translation that my favorite waiter in the Hotel typed into Google translate after he challenged me to a basketball game, him and Gerti against Eric and myself. Yesterday I told him that I was going to play basketball at with all the boys and he simply said, in Shqip, “you’re too fat to play basketball.” This is where I decided to act like I didn’t understand and told him to come watch if he didn’t believe me. He snuck out of work for a split second, obviously enough time to see me play and today he was talking about how I could dribble or “tremblim” between my legs and did motions of shooting at made the “swish” noise. This was all very flattering and then he decided I cant be that good because I’m a girl and the proceeded to challenge me to a game, all while waiting tables and shit-typing (crap talking into Google translator that he could beat me), which was pretty impressive considering he was doing it all at once.
After my run we went down to the basketball courts like we do most nights and met him to play. I felt like I was at the Fulton YMCA in high school trying to earn my place playing basketball with kids who had never played organized basketball before; and even though I was on the team at school I still had to beat them for them to think I good enough, then when or if I actually did beat them it could screw me anyways.
We ended up adding some players to both our teams, the regulars, and even though it wasn’t what he wanted, my team did in fact beat his team…. Twice.
