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Sat | January 14, 2006
football
Because I had nothing better to do, and I wanted to "be there" for my parents, who are going to Mexico tomorrow, I sat around and watched football all day today.
"How much football can they have in a day?" I asked my dad, when another game started.
"Two," my dad said.
Bizarrely, my understanding of football mostly comes from high school gym class. One year we took a break from perpetual volleyball to play touch football for several weeks. It's funny how some things which you think are small and insignificant at the time end up being useful or holding you in good stead for years to come.
Not that football is so useful to me. But in recent years I have found it somewhat interesting to watch. I experience what is perhaps a sadistic fascination in watching people make a tremendous effort for very little result-- for progress of a few feet. There has been so much slow futility in my post-undergraduate years that it feels comforting to watch someone else's unproductive efforts.
The essence of football, to me, seems to be frustration. And of baseball-- waiting. But football-- frustration and also wasted effort and unproductivity, a lot of it seemingly unnecessary. I mean, if I controlled the world, and someone wanted to run a ball to the other end of a field, I would just let him. I wouldn't want to be an obstacle; in fact I would get out of the way.
Which is pretty much how I played football in high school. I wonder if the guys who were into it were annoyed about the lackadaisical attitude towards gym class. But football was a little different because at some point people did get into it. I think this was in part because it was the one sport where we had fixed teams, instead of drifting randomly into groups, or worse, getting chosen.
I remember the day that I realized we were actually having fun in gym. Greg Tsang was our captain and we were playing Paul Hajjar's team. We had played them a couple of days ago and lost. And after the first few attempts Greg said he had an idea. He told us all to run to one side of the field, leading all the people marking us along. Then he faked out Paul and ran for a touchdown.
The whole thing was unprecedented because usually, everyone ran wherever they felt like, trying to get open. It was unusual to have a plan at all.
So that was kind of fun and memorable. And then "football season" was over and I remember kind of missing it. I also remember that when Greg called us into a huddle, saying, I have a plan, Holly said amusedly, Greg thinks about this. It was the only non-peevish thing she had ever said within my hearing. And I had never agreed with anything that Holly had ever said, ever. But she had said exactly what I was thinking.
That was high school. I guess school wasn't bad all the time. Of high school, I mostly remember the seemingly irremediable frustration with "the system" that I felt during my last year, and my desire to simply leave. I was happy the first year, and maybe another, and then increasingly disillusioned the third year, and miserable the last.
Today it was the Seahawks versus the Redskins. If deciding what team to root for, I think about what word I like better. Patriots versus Broncos, this second game, is easier. Broncos are definitely better because I have very little remaining American patriotism. The quarterback is very cute but this doesn't make up for it. Also, I am a horse in Chinese astrology so wild horses are definitely favored. Between seahawks and redskins, there are reasons to like both. Redskins represent injustice, and seahawks are animals, and apparently they have some connection to the sea.
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