duck-shaped pain

I wasn't scheduled to work at either job today, and actually have no work to do until Monday, so today was scheduled to be the Day of Unpacking and Reading, and it turned out to be neither. I unpacked one thing -- a skillet. I already have five or six skillets as it is, but this particular one was on the top of a very large box and it didn't need to be unwrapped. After that, I gave up.

You'd think I would be rushing to read all the new things i bought while in Portland, but you'd be wrong. The problem with getting so much new stuff at once is that it's overwhelming. It all demands your attention at once, and while you try to accomodate it all, your brain seizes up after awhile -- a state for which there is no antidote, not even crappy TV and the local newspaper.

I now subscribe to Sports Illustrated and I have no idea why. It just started showing up. It's not really addressed to me, it's addressed to just my last name -- no first name given. It could be for me, it could be for my dad, it could be for anyone -- I have one of those last names that is newly popular as a first name for middle-class white children.

It could be worse -- mysterious issues of TV Guide could be showing up at my house. [1] SI is, I guess, somewhat useful. One of my deepest secrets -- it kind of shows you what sort of people I know that this has to be a deep, dark secret, sort of like admitting that you enjoy the concept of veal -- is that I don't totally hate sports.

I do know lots of people who like sports -- smart people, people who know how to talk about things other than sports. These people tend to be really into baseball, though. My secret is deeper than that. I like, sometimes, once in a while....professional football.

I'm not fanatical about it. I just have a reasonable idea of how the game works, can watch it on TV and not be bored, and can follow whatever the hell sports writers talk about when they talk about football.

My family loves football -- every Sunday (or Monday night) during my childhood, they would all get together to watch their favorite team play, and it was an enormous big deal. Later, when I passed through the stage where I was completely embarassed by everything my family did, football was a very easy thing to hate. I was superior! I read books instead and scoffed at the idea of watching grown men who ran around and injured each other's knees for a living. Later, when I left home, I discovered that there were many people out there whose family lives didn't revolve around football in some manner and who actually didn't pay much attention to sports at all.

Colorado is a big football state. It's the only thing we ever riot over. Since it's such a constant presence, it's acutally sort of easy to tune it out if you try, which I managed to so for quite a few years.

Oregon, on the other hand, has no real football. If you want to see some, you have to watch Seahawks games on TV, which is more or less the same thing as no football at all. The only sport they have, at least on the professional level, is basketball, which I hate with a passion.

I never expected to miss football...but I did. I don't know if it was homesickness, some sort of weird reaction to Portland, or just the realization that hey, it's okay to like this, but it all sort of hit all of a sudden. I started scouring the sports pages of the Oregonian for NFL news, which was sparse at best. I watched it whenever it came on TV, which was not often -- our cable-less TV only picked up Fox and three Spanish channels, so i saw more soccer than anything.

The day I got back to Colorado last year was the same day as the Colorado vs. Colorado State game, which ended in the same way all great Colorado football games end, with puking and mass demonstrations and tear gas being dispersed everywhere. It was pretty appalling, but in a weird way, it felt good to be back home. [2]

Now that I've accepted this part of me, I feel at peace. I don't go out of my way to watch games, unless it's one I'm specifically interested in, but now, there's always something to do on weekends in the fall. There's always something to talk about with strangers in the checkout lane. There's now an actual reason for me to read the sports pages in the paper.

Oh yeah, I also like hockey, sort of - but don't tell anyone about that.

[1] Something which actually happened to someone I know. It wasn't the scariest thing that suddenly appeared in his mailbox, but it was the most consistent. Still, it was no Lonely Alaska Men, which is a story for another time.