So this morning I woke up and everything was normal. I had pop tarts for breakfast (Stephanie thinks my reliance on pre-packaged “easy foods” is funny and endearing) then sat down at my computer to peruse the NBA news of the day. Of course I skipped all the news about contracts because 1. I don’t understand how contracts work or how the salary cap works or what it means when draft picks are “protected” and 2. it triggers me when I read about large sums of money.
But then I saw something which literally made me say “damn it” out loud. Stephanie asked me what was wrong and I told her they nerfed my favorite vehicle in Rocket League, but the reality was way worse than that my friends.
It’s sort of embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t even realize the NBA season started today. I knew preseason was going on but when the heck did Adam Silver move up opening night by two weeks? More importantly, why wasn’t this information communicated to me before today?
The highlights part I could deal with. I’m always ready to make NBA highlight videos. My storage and computational needs are satisfied, and my innate ability to masterfully edit NBA video footage will never diminish. But there was another problem: Stephanie had no clue, absolutely no clue that when the NBA season starts I pretty much neglect every other facet of my life in order to provide NBA-related content on my world-renowned YouTube channel. I turn into like a highlights hermit.
I always suck at having “serious” conversations. But I was going to have to have one with Stephanie and there was no time to plan it out to soften the blow.
So she was sitting on the couch petting Japurri and I told her “I have something sort of important to tell you.” She looked surprised since the most important thing I ever said to her was that the bottom row of the freezer is for hot pocket storage only, no exceptions. She was like “What’s that?” and then I told her that the NBA season was starting today.
She laughed. It was an innocent laugh that was a result of her ignorance on how drastically my lifestyle changes when regular-season NBA basketball starts. “Is that all?” she said.
I sat down next to her on the couch and looked her in the eyes. I shouldn’t have looked at her eyes though because she has really cute eyes and it made the next words really hard to say. “You don’t understand. This means that we can’t be together anymore.” Now that I type it out it sounds like a really bad romance novel, but I swear that’s what I said. DTB always strives for historical accuracy.
Another downside of me looking at her face right at that moment is that I could see her heart breaking. That was scary for me because I didn’t know women had real emotions like that. I thought their only emotion was shopping. I could tell she didn’t really understand my reasoning so I had to explain further. “I have a YouTube channel with sixty thousand subscribers and I have to make NBA highlight videos for them and it’s really not fair to you to keep being my girlfriend because highlights are my girlfriend now.”
Stephanie started crying then and she cried even louder when I said “you have to leave now” in a really flat voice. I gently prodded her to get up so she could leave forever but she curled up in a ball and sobbed some more. To be honest with you guys I didn’t appreciate all the guilt she was laying on me. It was sad for me too, you know?
Since I was feeling generous, I told her that if she really wanted to still have boyfriend, I know a guy who’s perpetually in the GF market. His name’s Stanley but we all call him “B.O. Stan” because he has really foul body odor. But I made it clear that he’s really chill, he’s relatively attractive (about on par with me TBH), and he makes a lot of money so that should have softened the blow for her.
Here’s where the soap thing comes into play again. I went to the bathroom and got a bar of fancy soap from the cupboard and gave it to her. “You can give this to B.O. Stan when you go on your first date.” She didn’t hold out her hands to take it or anything so I just set it on top of her head while she was lying there. Then she got mad and threw it at me, luckily it didn’t hit anything important like my computer.
I regretted having to end the relationship so abruptly, but it’s not my fault that Adam Silver deliberately set out to ruin my life by setting an arbitrary, random start date for the season. Every minute that passed with Stephanie still trespassing in my house was a minute where I couldn’t prepare for the upcoming highlights extravaganza, so I sort of helped Stephanie to her feet and guided her out the door.
I guess it was poetic that it was raining. Anyway, Stephanie just stood outside my apartment and cried until I said “I have to do highlights now” and I closed the door.
I haven’t checked to see if she’s still there but I don’t feel any real need to. As I told her, highlights are my girlfriend now. You guys understand, right?