Happy Endings

I am in Florida! My mom called me to say she was going to fly me down to see them, since they couldn’t make it to Canada as they had planned, so here I am. And it’s cold! I flew right up and over the “monster storm” hitting the east coast, but its tentacles of cold have curled themselves around Sebring where I’m staying until Thursday. It’s 61 degrees!

And last night I learned about a culture I have been studiously avoiding for years: the Superbowl. My parents wanted to watch the game, so Robert and I sat down with them, and I watched both play-off games! You should be proud of me, because I have never sat through a single football game in my whole life. I don’t know the rules or the positions or the big name players. I can’t even identify the teams. And I have to admit, I have been prejudiced against this culture for various reasons that go all the way back to high school when it seemed to me that the big football jocks were arrogant and had girls coming after them simply because they could knock other people over really well. It didn’t help to find out the amount of money that star players make, or to see how they are idolized, or to know that the Superbowl is the single biggest sex-trafficking event in the world. All that male testosterone. Bear with me (I just saw this in an article spelled “bare” with me. Imagine that. Or not.) Like I said, I have a certain prejudice toward this culture that I’m openly confessing.

Because last night I saw another side of football. I suppose that all those fancy cameras covering every angle and slowing down every play helps. I saw an entire stadium worth of humans all wearing blue (I bet Superbowl games have to have the most people voluntarily wearing one color in the world). I heard a NEIGH!!! every time the Broncos scores and a GRRR!!! every time the Panthers scored (which was a lot. 49 points. Including conversions, which, I learned, have nothing to do with religion. In fact, I still don’t know who gets converted. And what grown man goes NEIGH!!! Games make us silly!) And Dad was there to explain that not everyone on the team can catch a (forward) throw, and that when the play goes to the other team after an interception or four downs, the entire team changes on the field because everyone’s role is so different on the field. And the quarterback is really the captain and can do anything he wants. I saw this very calm quarterback named Cam run the ball all the way off the field. I saw him give the ball to a little guy in the grand stand, who, I later found out, had been promised by his dad they would come to a Panthers game, but the dad had died the week before, so the two granddads had brought him, and Cam didn’t know anything about any of that.

You see, it’s all about the story. I finally understood that. As humans we love story. We crave story. We invent a back story about every single thing that ever happens to us. So often the back story doesn’t match up with reality (No, our neighbor didn’t say that out of spite but out of ignorance; no, that driver isn’t  trying to make us late but is distracted), but that doesn’t stop us. We are as good at creating fiction as non. And the Superbowl is a giant nonfiction story happening in real time. You have these quarterbacks and their teams and coaches working toward a goal with so many stumbling blocks and opponents working against them. It’s an excellent plot. The suspense is addictive. The fun about this particular story is that as a reader, you get to pick your protagonist, casting all other characters in the story as antagonists. And different people choose different protagonists, placing themselves in the story. Then the story of their team becomes their own story at home or on Facebook or wherever (NEIGHHH!!! GRRRRRRRRR!!!). Some people risk huge sums of money on their protagonist, gambling on the outcome of the story, adding to the suspense, giving themselves an adrenalin rush. Story is addictive.

Now that I am caught up in the story of this particular Superbowl, an absolute first (and possible last) for me, I have to pick a Protagonist and ride the bucking bronco or the stalking panther to the happy ending. Or not. Hmm. I definitely identify with the Carolinas over Colorado because I lived there once and loved it. Love the Carolinas. So let’s just go with that. And watching Cam, knowing nothing about him whatsoever, he looked kind of serene and contented, not sour like some guy with long braids on a team dressed all in red I saw. Of course that media shot of Peyton’s four year old son peeking out from behind his dad while he was standing there, behind the podium, giving his statement, makes his story kind of cool. The guy is old.  A family man. Hmm. That’s interesting. But no. I’m sticking with the serene rookie who hands balls to grieving kids. May he win. May my newly chosen Protoganist, that I never heard of until today, win. May my newly chosen story have its happy ending.