Squirrelly Winds of Candlestick

So I'm sitting up in bed, an empty blog page on my lap, feeling a bit down because my super awesome fantasy football team got creamed this week, when my wife comes into the bedroom. She leans over and gives me one of those perfect soft lipped kisses that lingers just a few seconds longer than a casual peck.

"Sorry" she says. "I'll let you get back to your writing."

She leaves the room and my pity party is clearly at an end.

Its terrible.

Meaningless defeat thwarted by a flesh and blood win.

Clearly the universe senses my rage and has sent me a neatly wrapped box of perspective.

For it wasn't just the Week 2 fate of the football season that had me out of sorts, it was a lot of little things. Stupidities, injustices, failures, even a few adulterated successes, they pile upon each other and I don't even realize how much weight I have given them until gravity protests. So alone I sit, in a room, with the fan muting the sound of the house around me. And I stare off. And my knuckles curve. And I breathe deep when I feel the adrenaline rise. And there is so much stuff sitting on my chest that I don't even know where to begin or how to categorize it. And I think "Fuck . . . I am never gonna win this, am I?"

And by "This" I mean "Life"

*   *   *

Kay comes into my shop a few months back. A striking vivacious woman with a smokey voice and a salty demeanor. She looks tired.

"The doctors have only given Paul a few months to live." she says.

She doesn't need to say more. Her order had already been made and I wave away her credit card.

I don't know Paul very much. Some might call him gruff, but to me he's a no bullshit cast iron mother fucker who wants his iced tea cold and his ginger cookie spicy.

I clearly have a lot of affection for the two of them.

Yet each day they come in I want to go up to Paul and ask him if he won.

"Did you win, Paul? Did you give more than you got? Did you make the world a better place? Did you   give people meaning and inspiration? Did you live a good life?"

And he would have no idea what the hell I'm talking about because men like Paul don't have the time or the energy to second guess or fritter away. They don't care about the unturned stone or the un-sniffed rose and questions like that are the reason we lost the Vietnam War.

So I'm thinking about Paul when Detroit gets in field goal range and my attention returns to the game.

"That should be in field goal range." Says one commentator.

"Who knows, in the squirrelly winds of Candlestick." Says another.

And that's just it. Its game time. And what works in one place might not work in another. It could go left, it could go right. It could go up, it could go down. And dude I really need this win because my family is counting on me and I've been preparing this for a lifetime and no matter what I do, the wind is going to do exactly what it does and even if I choose perfectly I could still lose. So I would freeze and get my ass handed to me by an outside linebacker.

But that's not what Paul would do.

Paul would aim for the middle.

Paul would kick the fucking ball.

Then Paul would go home, kiss his pretty wife and tap her gently on the ass, and ask what's for dinner.

Win or lose, Paul wins.

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