Peripheral vision

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So there I was, Sunday afternoon, along with one hundred million other watchers, waiting for the Superbowl to start. The host family had left delicious chili warming in the crockpot, so you could get up and serve yourself supper any time you wanted. Daughter made this awesome spinach dip (Robert and I both wondered how that spinach came out so perfectly square in the bowl. We’d never seen frozen squares of spinach before. So practical). There were corn chips to munch on, and that sour cream/salsa/cheese dip that you can just keep eating forever. The mom gave us all those questionnaires to fill out before the game. Who will win? What will the score be? (My guess was only off by one point! Should have gambled on that one! Here’s a question. Even if you have an inkling the other team will win, do you still gamble on your own favorites out of loyalty? Loyalty to whom, really?) How many safeties? (Safeties? What are those?) And what songs does Cold Play even sing, and how would I know what color Beyonce’s boots could be. Are they always black? Because I guessed red. Unfortunately that was Lady Gaga. Did you happen to notice eyeshadow? I want some of that! The guesses were made, the couches were soft and full of people, and the game was on.

Big theme for the Superbowl: “Football is family.” All those Superbowl kids from throughout the years singing out their birthright. And I suppose it is. Family. It was for us in that living room, me snuggled next to a husband who is trying to have a conversation with the other dad, and the other family in its entirety watching together. I guess it was fun to try and follow the plays and figure out who passed to whom, and why flags flew, and why people kept walking on and off the field. It was as tricky and suspenseful as any storyline I’d tackled recently. And I felt sorry for those poor quarterbacks when they got the ball slapped right out of their hands, and for the poor guys (probably some other kind of “back”) who kept reaching, reaching, reaching…and failed. I groaned with the crowds, whatever the team was. I felt sorry for the guys that got their necks twisted around when people pulled on their face guards and for the ones that limped off the field after probably getting “concussed.” I doubt that is what the game was about, but I couldn’t help that. I saw what I saw and felt what I felt. Reminds me of Stargirl.

Remember her? She’s one of my favorite characters in literature, a creation of Jerry Spinelli (along with Maniac Magee). I was just reading about him: Did you know that at 16, when he started to write (and Maniac started to run) he went to a football game, and when his team won a big game, and everyone else went cheering through the streets, he went home to write about it? Like me. Anyway, Stargirl joins the Cheering Squad at her school and entertains the entire crowd with her antics, but unfortunately, she can’t just cheer for her own team. She cheers the losers, and the ones that get broken on the field, and she definitely cheers the “wrong” side. Read the book to see what happens next. I always tell my class Stargirl is a Jesus figure. They cock their heads and wrinkle their eyebrows at me.

See, there’s always more than just the game. And maybe that’s what we forget most often and can least afford to forget. After the game, I saw all these posts about all the peripheral issues haunting the Superbowl. You know, the ticket prices. The salaries. The corporate profits. The homeless displaced and ignored again. The lifestyles and adulation. The women and children brought in the area to service so much testosterone. Exactly how much of the Superbowl is about family, really? I found out people boycott the event to make a statement. I guess I’ve kind of done that all my life. Just now taking a peep to see if I was right, and finding it’s a mixed bag.

I like stories. I like drama and excellence and shows. I like to see what humans are capable of accomplishing. We were made for splendor and awe. But it’s never that simple, is it, as Stargirl well knew. Show can be seductive, too, like sex. Isn’t that American politics in a nutshell right now?

Jacques Bertaux 1793

There’s this great scene in Tale of Two Cities where Defarge takes the Mender of Roads to see the king. The peasant is dazzled by the spectacle and cheers, “Long live the king.” He eats it up. Never has he seen such a thing in his life, and he loves the show. Defarge holds him by the collar to keep him from “flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.” (Does this sound like any fans you know?) Defarge is pleased because, as he says, “You make these fools believe that it will last forever.”  Remember, it’s the eve of the Revolution. Madame Defarge comments with utter sarcasm, "You would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?" The Mender is oblivious to everything that is happening behind the scenes in the Royal Palace. “I think so,” he says. In his day, the spectacle was as seductive as a Superbowl.

I ask God for good peripheral vision.