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Another Friday. And here I am, forgoing the football ritual. Here I am typing towards some undiscovered country, listening to Wagner who had lousy politics and personality but an awesome ear. Carmel's first game is tonight - is happening right now, in fact. Cars are pulling up beneath my window, parking on the grass, but not yet blocking my own car. The bleachers are only half-finished so students were asked to sit on the far side. They get in for a dollar if they bring their own lawn chair. I believe that at JCA home games were free for students. This is a difference. The Sports Assembly at the end of school was pretty well organized with funny introductions for each of the teams. It began well. For some reason the Sophomores were the most raucous class. The Freshmen up in the balcony could barely be heard. Another odd thing - just before the football team was introduced, the bus kids were dismissed and the gym emptied by half. The team came out, were introduced one by one, and the assembly ended. (I knew bus transportation was important to the school; know I know how important.) That I am missing the football game should come as no surprise to people who know me. I do not like the sport, but I don't begrudge others the joy they find in it. It seems to mean a lot to quite a few people. I was a very poor fan for JCA sports, but I always recognized and valued the passion, hard work, and sense of tradition attached to them. I used to be pretty negative about it all; but because it was/is important to so many of my students, I have come to terms with the athletic impulse. My animosity probably goes back to my own half-hearted attempts and failures in the neighborhood. Never liked football, but those baseball games in the park (at some point kind of organized by Joe Delrose) were lots of fun. I was just never very sharp. I learned poetic contemplation in right field (when I got out there at all). I think Carmel is favored to win tonight over North Chicago. The line is: "They (North Chicago) have great athletes; they just may not have a team." I'm not realy sure what that means, but it sounds good (simultaneously generous and nasty?) I understand that JCA is playing their opener against Mt. Carmel tomorrow night. Jay is going down for it. I suspect Mt. Carmel is the favorite, but what do I know? One disturbing thing (among several) that appeared around the JCA literary magazine controversy last spring was the appearance of fairly deep division between some "athletes" and some "others" (whatchamacallems?). I think the discourse around the Columbine shootings reinforced distinctions between "jocks" and "outsiders". Everyone became more conscious of the divisions among adolescent cultures. Over the years I had fooled myself into thinking that such polarization had been overcome in this brave new loving and tolerant world of the nineties. Stupid me. For teens, the body (and thus Sport) will always be the site of Big Conflict, the fault along which whole worlds get defined. I guess it's inevitable, even biological. So I guess that even I have had to define myself in relation to this big cultural reality of Sport. It's impossible to ignore. We take our games seriously around here. |
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Roland Barthes |