Tomorrow evening, the Seattle Seahawks, the football team I've rooted for since I was six, will play in the Super Bowl for the second consecutive season. Don't worry football haters, this entry isn't really about football; I'm not going to be breaking down how the Seahawks cover-3 defense will attempt to contain Rob Gronkowski or anything like that. I mention the Super Bowl only to say that, surprisingly, I'm not that excited about it. I'm excited about it, but not that excited.
There are a few reasons for this. For one, the Seahawks just won the Super Bowl last year. It was the first time I ever witnessed one of "my" teams win a championship, so it felt like a once in a lifetime moment. It's just not the same feeling this year. It's still fun, but not the same. It's like when you finish an all-time great TV show like, say, Breaking Bad, and then you try to plug the TV hole -- that void of emotional investment -- with a show like Homeland. There's nothing wrong with Homeland -- it's a good show (except for the third season) -- but coming off Breaking Bad, it's a letdown.
For another thing, logistically speaking, this Super Bowl comes at a bad time. S leaves for Africa tonight on a week-long work trip, so I'm in charge of the little man. He's too young to watch an entire football game (he can't even make it through a minute and a half highlight without requesting we switch it to Super Why), so if I want to watch the Super Bowl in peace, I need to get him out of the house. Thankfully, one of our friends said she'd take him for game (she has young kids and they play well together), so I'm planning to take him there and then go to a different friend's house for a Super Bowl party, which, I'm sure, sounds much better in theory than it will be in practice. The two friends don't live near each other, so it's like an hour of extra driving (at least). And then the game doesn't start until 6:30, so I'm looking at like a 10:30 pickup on a work night (I'm hoping for a blowout like last year so I can leave early). So Lil' S's schedule is going to be all messed up, and we all know how important schedules are for little kids. Oh, also it might snow tomorrow -- a nice little "bonus".
Then there are things that have nothing to do with football or Super Bowl parties or anything of the such that make it hard for me to get too excited about this game. Like, it's fucking freezing here, and it's starting to wear me out. Yesterday it was oppressively cold -- the type of cold where you step outside and that first blast of wind feels like somebody lashed your face with a cat o' nine tails. People complain about the weather in the Sea-Tac region because it's overcast all the time, but at least going outside there doesn't cause physical agony; you get a Gortex jacket and go on your way. Here you have to dress like you're on the planet Hoth just to take out the trash. (The other day I got caught outside in a particular bad cold spell and had to wait it out inside a dead tauntaun. It kept me warm, but it didn't smell too good.) I also don't like the cold weather because it's causing a new fantastical fear for me: I keep having this recurring image of Lil' S getting locked outside of his daycare without his jacket and freezing to death before anybody notices he's gone. It's absurd, I know, but so is randomly going into his bed while he's sleeping to make sure he's breathing, and I still do that even though he's two and a half years old.
I also got some terrible news earlier this week that makes it hard to care about frivolities like football. A member of my extended family has liver cancer -- a young guy too, younger than me. He's got a wife and kids and ... it's just terrible. I don't know too much about the diagnosis, other than he's looking to get a new liver and his brother is hopefully a suitable donor.
In other bad, but-not-as-bad news a mother of one of the kids at Lil' S's daycare got hit by an SUV while riding her bike with her daughter on the back. Luckily, the only injuries were a broken wrist and a black eye for her and a sprained foot for her daughter. (Well, these are lucky only if we condition on her getting hit in the first place, which obviously is an incredibly unlucky event.) In fact, the main problem isn't one of injuries, but one of day-to-day life logistics. This woman doesn't have much money nor a car nor a stroller, so her bike was her only form of transporting her daughter -- and now that's smashed. Also, with a broken wrist, she can't carry her daughter very well, so just getting her to daycare or the doctor's office is extremely difficult.
This woman has a pretty interesting story. Her parents died when she was really young, so she was raised her entire life in foster care, somewhere in Florida, I think. She's pretty sharp, so she went to college, and now she works full-time and goes to law school part-time. Somewhere along the line, she got married and had a kid, but her husband was abusive, so she left him. (He is at least paying child support.) Now she's up here, in her mid-twenties (and she looks ten-years younger than that), trying to juggle work, school, and motherhood, all by herself. That's the kicker: She has no family or friends to help her out -- no real support network of any type. Can you imagine? Along with some other parents at the daycare, we've been helping her out a bit -- giving her rides, lending her a stroller, buying her some premade meals so she didn't have to worry about cooking, things like that -- but we can't be her family or her best friends. That's not the type of thing you can just do. It takes time to build those relationships. And if you have them, cherish them, because not everybody is so lucky.
OK, I guess that's all I have today. No snow and a Seahawks victory -- that's what I'm hoping for this weekend. They won't make all the far bigger ills in the world go away, but, at the very least, they will put a smile on the face of one middle-aged white man.
Until next time ...
There are a few reasons for this. For one, the Seahawks just won the Super Bowl last year. It was the first time I ever witnessed one of "my" teams win a championship, so it felt like a once in a lifetime moment. It's just not the same feeling this year. It's still fun, but not the same. It's like when you finish an all-time great TV show like, say, Breaking Bad, and then you try to plug the TV hole -- that void of emotional investment -- with a show like Homeland. There's nothing wrong with Homeland -- it's a good show (except for the third season) -- but coming off Breaking Bad, it's a letdown.
[The end of a 1983 playoff game between the Seahawks and Dolphins. This game marks the beginning of my adulation for the 'Hawks. I didn't actually watch it, but I remember hearing that the Seahawks upset the Dolphins and the mighty Dan Marino. It's the first football game I remember being conscious of.]
For another thing, logistically speaking, this Super Bowl comes at a bad time. S leaves for Africa tonight on a week-long work trip, so I'm in charge of the little man. He's too young to watch an entire football game (he can't even make it through a minute and a half highlight without requesting we switch it to Super Why), so if I want to watch the Super Bowl in peace, I need to get him out of the house. Thankfully, one of our friends said she'd take him for game (she has young kids and they play well together), so I'm planning to take him there and then go to a different friend's house for a Super Bowl party, which, I'm sure, sounds much better in theory than it will be in practice. The two friends don't live near each other, so it's like an hour of extra driving (at least). And then the game doesn't start until 6:30, so I'm looking at like a 10:30 pickup on a work night (I'm hoping for a blowout like last year so I can leave early). So Lil' S's schedule is going to be all messed up, and we all know how important schedules are for little kids. Oh, also it might snow tomorrow -- a nice little "bonus".
Then there are things that have nothing to do with football or Super Bowl parties or anything of the such that make it hard for me to get too excited about this game. Like, it's fucking freezing here, and it's starting to wear me out. Yesterday it was oppressively cold -- the type of cold where you step outside and that first blast of wind feels like somebody lashed your face with a cat o' nine tails. People complain about the weather in the Sea-Tac region because it's overcast all the time, but at least going outside there doesn't cause physical agony; you get a Gortex jacket and go on your way. Here you have to dress like you're on the planet Hoth just to take out the trash. (The other day I got caught outside in a particular bad cold spell and had to wait it out inside a dead tauntaun. It kept me warm, but it didn't smell too good.) I also don't like the cold weather because it's causing a new fantastical fear for me: I keep having this recurring image of Lil' S getting locked outside of his daycare without his jacket and freezing to death before anybody notices he's gone. It's absurd, I know, but so is randomly going into his bed while he's sleeping to make sure he's breathing, and I still do that even though he's two and a half years old.
[The open-belly tauntaun, one of the weirdest toys ever. I had one.]
I also got some terrible news earlier this week that makes it hard to care about frivolities like football. A member of my extended family has liver cancer -- a young guy too, younger than me. He's got a wife and kids and ... it's just terrible. I don't know too much about the diagnosis, other than he's looking to get a new liver and his brother is hopefully a suitable donor.
In other bad, but-not-as-bad news a mother of one of the kids at Lil' S's daycare got hit by an SUV while riding her bike with her daughter on the back. Luckily, the only injuries were a broken wrist and a black eye for her and a sprained foot for her daughter. (Well, these are lucky only if we condition on her getting hit in the first place, which obviously is an incredibly unlucky event.) In fact, the main problem isn't one of injuries, but one of day-to-day life logistics. This woman doesn't have much money nor a car nor a stroller, so her bike was her only form of transporting her daughter -- and now that's smashed. Also, with a broken wrist, she can't carry her daughter very well, so just getting her to daycare or the doctor's office is extremely difficult.
This woman has a pretty interesting story. Her parents died when she was really young, so she was raised her entire life in foster care, somewhere in Florida, I think. She's pretty sharp, so she went to college, and now she works full-time and goes to law school part-time. Somewhere along the line, she got married and had a kid, but her husband was abusive, so she left him. (He is at least paying child support.) Now she's up here, in her mid-twenties (and she looks ten-years younger than that), trying to juggle work, school, and motherhood, all by herself. That's the kicker: She has no family or friends to help her out -- no real support network of any type. Can you imagine? Along with some other parents at the daycare, we've been helping her out a bit -- giving her rides, lending her a stroller, buying her some premade meals so she didn't have to worry about cooking, things like that -- but we can't be her family or her best friends. That's not the type of thing you can just do. It takes time to build those relationships. And if you have them, cherish them, because not everybody is so lucky.
OK, I guess that's all I have today. No snow and a Seahawks victory -- that's what I'm hoping for this weekend. They won't make all the far bigger ills in the world go away, but, at the very least, they will put a smile on the face of one middle-aged white man.
Until next time ...
Random comment: The "12" building in your last picture is the Russell Investments Center building where I work. (It's also the building that houses the Seattle Art Museum with the Hammering Man.)
ReplyDeleteMan, the end of that game was SO frustrating!
Cool! (The fact about the building, not the end of the game.)
ReplyDelete