Last Night

It has been so long since I last posted. I know where I am in this world enough to know that creating anything will get you nowhere except further along in your creativity, which is something, at least. Sometimes that doesn't seem enough, though. Sometimes you look in other places, and what you discover is that the person you want to be is staring back in the mirror wondering what needs to be done that day. Strange how it doesn't make you any happier with yourself. But there you are. Now get on with it.

You are a Jets fan, after all.

Last night, I watched the Bears-Vikings on MNF, nurturing a an unsurprising grudge. This game represented what I hoped would be a culmination of feelings bottled up all year. These are feelings that many similarly self-respecting people have been quietly sharing for some time, I would imagine. Nurtured within these is a deep desire to see Brett Favre crash and burn the way he did last year. I try not to act like a petty man, but I am one by nature. I like to see bad behavior punished, no matter how long it takes. Like so many people, for one reason or another, I have come to genuinely dislike this singularly narcissistic, selfish, and talented man. He abandoned me, Paramus, Massapequa and Massapequa Park the way he once abandoned the entire state of Wisconsin, and now I feel that one thing that might still unite this nation of deluded religious fundamentalists and featherheads would be to share a mutual desire to see this one man punished in the manner of the ancient Greeks.

And thus it seemed possible. For three quarters, he seemed befuddled, rushed, hurried, even confused. He had undermined his coach earlier in the week, and with that his team, just as usual. He wasn't the incompetent, bored jackass of last year, but a 23-6 deficit to the Bears sufficed. The score drew closer, though. So I watched the whole game. I can't remember the last time I watched an entire Monday night game. You try doing it and teaching tenth graders at 7:45 am Tuesday morning.

Then there was that drive that ate up what seemed like five minutes toward the end of the fourth quarter and drew the tie with an absolutely brilliant pass to Sidney Rice. My heart sank because I was obviously witnessing what makes this self-centered man special to begin with. He is not like you and me. Obviously I felt renewed and overjoyed when Cutler won the game with a touchdown pass, but the possibility of losing a bye to the Eagles was not enough. I want to see the man crushed. I want his spirit broken the way he broke ours. The work is not yet accomplished. But I feel in my heart it will be.

That night, I dreamt that I had a boil on my face the size of a golf ball. I was about to teach class, but Brett Favre, in a Brooks Brothers suit, stepped forward and walked into my principal's office and insisted, without acknowledging me at all, "That Roche can't teach today in that condition!" Damn you, man! I will have my revenge!