For some time now, my friends and I have scoured local bars and gathering places for attractive females, in most cases, to no avail.  Indeed, the culture shock of moving away from the happy breeding grounds of college and back to (arguably) the doldrums of eastern Pennsylvania has left most of us with a defeatist's attitude.  Sure, you chuckle, but it's a big life change.  Like Pippen without Jordan, Spade without Farley...or Bonds without steroids.

(Wait for it.)

(Wait for it.)

(Okay.)

Saturday night, during a frustrated trip to an area watering hole, we stumbled across an enigma; a social conundrum, if you will.  So jaw dropping was this anomaly that my friends and I maintained a steady 24 hours of pure and utter awe, like seeing a albino tiger in the wild. 

I assure you fellas, it is possible to see an Eleven.

What do I mean?  What's an Eleven?  Well, for ages, guys have used the trusted "one-to-ten" scale to mentally rank the total attractiveness of women.  (If you're just finding out about this now, I'm sorry to say it, but Santa isn't real, either.)  Anyway, based on personal preference and one's relative level of drunkenness, the official "rating" a particular female achieves ultimately determines the number of bumbling fools that will hit on her over the course of her life.  Granted, the scale is subjective, but differences are usually negligible, like the AP and Coaches' polls in college sports.  Take a cross-section of society and you'll notice the same bell-curve you see in other statistical analyses; there are clearly more fours and fives than nines and tens.  The system isn't foolproof, but it's sheer simplicity and consistency is so trusted that it will remain a staple in the male gender for centuries to come.

So, you may ask how it's possible to score an eleven on a one-to-ten scale?  Contrary to popular belief, "the scale" is not based solely on looks.  In the case of social interaction with female subjects, a rating can slide one way or another based on crucial intangibles, such as personality or Seinfeld knowledge.  Generally, aptitude in any areas that men find "cool" can shift someone's score two points higher or lower, thus making "extra credit" attainable, like bonus points for veterans on the Civil Service test.  In the RARE case of an attractive girl with exemplary sports AND sports gambling knowledge WITH an actual online wagering account... the sky's the limit.

Or in the words of Hubie Brown, she's got "tremendous upside."

This brings me to Saturday night, the night that will be forever enshrined as the night I met an Eleven. 

Through some odd, drunken interaction, some friends and I started up a half-hearted conversation with an extremely good-looking girl.  Remarkably, the exchange quickly snowballed into the most improbable of all discussions:  sports and online sports wagering.  I'm telling you, it actually happened.  I felt like I'd seen a UFO.

Her level of gambling acumen was astonishing.  She threw out terms like "parlay," "teaser," and the dreaded "juice."  She knew about the real "rule of three" for teams playing at home, not the term made famous by Steve Stifler in American Pie II.  She took shots at Vegas Vic and Hammerin' Hank, two gambling gurus with Mush-like talent.  She could smell a sucker line from a mile away and jeered at her brothers who always took the bait.  She gawked at the instability of wagering on college football and shared our love for March Madness.  She even laid a 20-spot on the dreadful Texans, on the road and heavy underdogs against the Ravens, with one of my friends.  And won.

Plain and simple, her knowledge was more fine-tuned than ours.  We'd unexpectedly been bettered at our own game.  Like Stoops in Oklahoma or Big Ben in Pittsburgh, we'd caught lightning in a bottle.

Mystified by this rarity, the car ride home was silent, like we'd suffered a heart-wrenching defeat despite our obvious victory.  "Mythbusters" would've been proud; we challenged a social oxymoron, a hot girl with a fire for sports and gambling more prevalent than Pete Rose, and won.  If only for a night, we'd done humanity a favor.  We met an Eleven.  It was like shaking hands with Bigfoot.

For most of the ride, we spoke in soft, revered tones trying to make sense of what transpired.  But, it just didn't seem to add up.  How could it be?  How could a normal, everyday girl with outstanding looks and solid family life be so...

And just like that, we realized the obvious.  It all made perfect sense.  Her brothers!  She had lots of BROTHERS!  She told us so.  There was no other explanation.  What a remarkable display of goodwill by one band of brothers, grooming one lucky sister into female perfection for others to marvel!

Though none of us have heard from her since, we learned a very important lesson.  Maybe we were looking under the wrong rocks all along?  Instead of asking our female friends if they knew other, single ladies, we should've been talking to our buddies.

About their younger sisters.