Some say there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance and I believe I’ve seen the line with my own eyes. Back in the good old days, my friends and I all had paper routes. I was the only one who had a Monday-Saturday day job as well as a Sunday gig. I don’t know your experiences of the business end of the newspaper delivery industry but let me tell you, Sundays suck. All the papers have huge inserts and various magazines and it makes your bag double the weight.
One of the houses I delivered to on a Sunday had the smallest letterbox you can imagine. If you think of a normal letter box size and half it, you’re getting close. This house took four newspapers. So I used to separate all the supplements and deliver them individually. This usually worked out, except in Winter when it started snowing. There was no chance was I would be drowned in snow, so upon noticing the bedroom window was open, I proceeded to lob the entire four-paper stack through the window and nonchalantly swaggered back to my BMX. That has to be the closest together I’d seen ‘confidence’ and ‘arrogance’ — until today.
I try to keep up with The MMA Hour but honestly, it’s on at an awkward time for me so I just watch clips after the fact. If I had tuned in, I would have seen Ben Askren tell Ariel Helwani that he wants to sign to the UFC and fight Rory McDonald. Not only that, but he also told Helwani that he is so confident in beating McDonald that he would fight for free then retire from the sport of MMA if he lost.
In my mind, Askren has so much such swagger that when he farts it actually comes out sounding like ‘yolo.’ This is coming from a guy who isn’t even signed to the UFC yet. If he does get picked up and gets matched up with McDonald, I sure hope Askren hasn’t rubbed confidence and arrogance so close together that he catches fire and goes down in flames. That’s what happened to my paper round anyway after the customer reported woken by four newspapers hitting her in the head to my boss.
