Random Thoughts with Will

     As a self-proclaimed sports fan, there are some famous plays and highlights I will never grow tired of watching. Seeing the famous clip of NC State's Lorenzo Charles dunking that basketball to defeat Houston and the aftermath of Jim Valvano running around will always be timely, though that could be in part because both my have NC State ties (sorry, Houston). With the exception of Stanford fans, just about any college football fan can watch "The Play" and get excited when the announcer shouts "the band is out on the field!" It's been over three decades, yet moments like Lorenzo Charles' dunk, "The Play", or the end of that U.S.-USSR Winter Olympics hockey game are still shown.      For as beautiful as one of those moments can be, there are countless other times where Jim Valvano doesn't run around the court, where the band doesn't get on the field, or where a miracle doesn't happen. We get our hopes up for a storybook ending, ...

     Earlier this week, while going on a run with a friend, we played the game "20 Questions" to help pass the time. There was one catch: it ended up being exclusively characters from cartoons and kid's shows (i.e. Mr. Rogers). It was a nice trip down memory lane and found me reminiscing about those shows.      If I were to look back on my childhood, while there were plenty of shows I enjoyed watching, one show was always the clear favorite: Spongebob Squarepants . If I had my choice of watching any show, it would have been that one. As it turns out, I'm not the only one. To this day, Nickelodeon is still cranking new episodes of Spongebob Squarepants . Airing for nearly 20 years (the first episode aired in May 1999) and over 200 episodes (not to mention 2 full-length movies), it is the longest-running Nickelodeon show all of all time.      Admittedly, with the exception of the 2nd movie, I can't remember the last time I watched a "new" e...

     A few years ago, I went up to my sister and asked her a crazy, hypothetical question beginning with the words "What if..." Although I can't remember the exact question, it was something that clearly had little to no chance of ever happening. Naturally, she answered it right back with "What if?" Over the years, it has become an inside joke between us where we will send one another these crazy "what if" questions, usually involving ourselves or another family member. For giggles and grins, here's an example "what if" question my sister, a marathon runner, has said before: what if I were running in a marathon and our grandma passed me at the finish line?      Although the "what if" questions my sister and I ask each other are admittedly over-the-top and unrealistic, we still have a lot of fun asking each other them. In reality, more realistic "what if" questions are posed all the time about historical events, sport...