The Journeys of Triumph and Adversity
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| Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr |
By Judith Cullen
(c) 2015
I am not a huge sports fan.
I am not a hater either; it has just never been my thing. Acknowledging that we are none of us ever
completely of one “type”, I am the art-theater-literature geek in the
family. Yet I have found myself in the
last two winters being the “sports fan enabler” in our household. I cook hot dogs, make cocoa, popcorn, and
dish up ice cream or whatever else might be the desired accent to the game-watching
experience.
I think my dis-relationship with sports goes back to early
days. I have never had much athletic
prowess or even a glimmer of talent. My
one brief, shining moment in sports came in elementary school where it became
clear I was a desirable player to have on ones team in dodgeball due to my great
skill at avoiding the ball in question.
I had enough arm strength to lob the red rubber sphere over the heads of
the opposing team to my team in the “jail” section, while managing to avoid
being out myself. A talent for avoidance
is not really highly prized in most sports outside of recess time.
Yet, for the last two winters I have gotten wrapped up in
the ascendancy of the Seattle Seahawks, our “home” team, in the annals of
American football history. For
dyed-in-the-wool sports fans, I am sure the appeal is familiar. Since we have established that I do not
possess a strong competitive gene, then there has to be something else which
appeals to my nature. It is the stories
that swirl around it that fascinate me, and observing the great drama of reactions to those
stories. Colorful characters, expanded
plot lines (sometimes painfully so), moments of high drama and ludicrous comedy:
it’s some of the best theater I have seen in years!
