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People who know me understand that
there is very little space in my head or in my heart for athletic
matters. There is space for books and movies and music. There
is space for whichever friends manage to stumble or barge their
way in. There is space for a cat's world and space for a computer's.
There is space for five classes full of freshmen and sophomores
and all of their wonderful things. There has been space for jogging,
for the stationary bike - even for step aerobics, for silly situps
and pushups that fool no one. But for the organized Sport (of
any denomination) that our nation so adores, I have no space.
There's something I just don't get
about high school football, but it has nothing to do with the
kids who play it. I recognize and value the importance they find
in it. I'm nobody to knock other folk's passions. But what's
going on with our culture and spectator sports? As a nation,
we're fatter than ever. We seem to like to sit (and munch) and
watch a relatively few superb athletes do their thing. Somebody
has discovered that this is good for business...
Wait. (I'm going to stop this rant
in its tracks. That's not where I want to go. Some of it is just
small-mindedness. I need to remember that poem by James Wright,
"Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio." It always helps
me to be human about this stuff.)
Anyway, given my disposition, it's
funny that this afternoon I sat through half of the third and
all of the fourth quarter of a football game. Joliet Catholic
Academy easily defeated Metamora to win the IHSA IV A State Championship.
I don't know much about football, but I know enough to know that
this was not a nail-biter. And it's clear that my viewing had
nothing to do with a love of the game. Of course, I was looking
for familiar faces...and I saw a few. Many were just shadows
inside those cavernous helmets, so I had to take the announcer's
word that this was Kinsella and that was Van Tassel. The camera
almost never panned the crowd.
I'm not sure I should have watched
that game this afternoon. I'm left with a tiny emotional storm.
Once again I had forgotten how casually over thirteen years I
had let myself get tangled up in the life of that place. Now,
I'm not sitting up here wishing I'd been able to go to that game
(or any of the games), to cheer them on to victory. And I'm only
a little sorry to say I don't think I've been to five games of
any kind in as many years. I'm not a fan in that way. But I was
a tiny part of JCA, and JCA apparently had worked itself into
me as well.
My storm has nothing to do with football.
It has a lot to do with regrets and outright failures. I'm still
angry with myself and others - and I'd be a fool to deny it.
The change has been a little wound, a tiny death...no biggie,
compared to what many have to face. Some of it has healed, but
not all. In time it will feel less like the big deal I have made
of it. It already does. I'm confronted by wonderful people and
possibilities in this new place. It's just that they still aren't
mine...yet...and I'm so damn impatient.
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