This feels like the appropriate thread to tell one of my favorite stories.
One of my best friends from A&M to the present played OL at Kingwood HS in the early 1990s and was on their team that had Aldine beat one year in the playoffs (think it was 90 or 91) when Aldine was #1 in the state, possibly in the nation, etc. In the last 30 seconds of the game, Aldine tossed a Hail Mary that one of Kingwood's DBs tried to intercept, whiffed on it, and Aldine's WR caught it for a game-winning 70 or 80 yard score.
So my buddy tells that story a couple of times to me when we're talking glory days in college and beyond. Fast forward 12 years post graduation and I've gone with my now-wife to San Francisco to attend her best friend's wedding. It's a big to-do and the day before the whole wedding party and guests takes a chartered bus up to a winery for the afternoon. One of the other bridesmaids is a girl my wife has not seen in several years since college, so on the bus, the two of them sit together and I sit with the other girl's husband.
I've never met this guy before that day so we're talking casually about California, and shooting the breeze and we come around to the fact that we're both from Houston and when he mentions he went to Kingwood HS as well, I bring u my buddy - and he remembers him from the football team. So I'm just trying to make conversation with the guy and I haven't heard the Aldine story in more than a decade and don't remember the details so I say, "Hey, didn't you guys once beat Aldine in the playoffs when they were #1 or something?"
He goes completely rigid, turns and stares me down and says, "Who the fark told you to ask me that?"
I had no idea what his problem was and said, "Nobody, sorry, my buddy told me that story a long time ago and I just don't remember what happened."
He takes off his sunglasses and says, "We lost to Aldine because of me. I gave up a Hail Mary TD at the end of the game. Thanks for bringing it up, *******."
I apologized multiple times but he wasn't having it. Didn't talk the rest of the way to the winery.
Several hours later when I had a break from the events, I texted my buddy from A&M with the question, "Hey do you remember a guy named *** **** from your high school?"
He texted back immediately. "Yeah, he's the ***** who cost us the Aldine game."