Holidays, Sports, and Television

I don’t have a sports gene. I don’t know why it skipped my generation, although it’s possible that it never really existed in my family.

My father used to turn on football games so he could nap on the couch. If we changed the station or turned off the television, he’d wake up immediately and say something like, “I was watching that!” I never understood how commercials didn’t interrupt his sleep but changing the station did. That’s the way it was.

Anyway, I have no dislike for sports. I’m just not interested. I do have to admit, however, that when I was teaching, I resented the huge amounts that sports figures were paid. I reckoned that when my classes were televised, when I was making upwards of eight figures a year, and a national commentator said, “Look at that lesson plan about Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath come together! Did you see that student field that question about the oversoul? It was a winner!” When that happened I would start watching professional football.

I went to football games and basketball games when I was in high school. I went pretty regularly 50 years ago, but it was social and I wanted to fit in. I went to games in college too, I guess. I think I can remember going to a few. But my heart was never in it.

These days Ann and I watch the Blackhawks, but I frequently watch with a book in my hand, and if I miss a play - or a game - I don’t get too upset. I am concerned that Huet allows too many goals. But I could emulate my dad and sleep through the games and not really know the difference, I suspect.

Bear with me while I change the subject, but I’ll tie it all together pretty soon:

The holidays are coming up. We know that because of the sudden influx of high end catalogs in the mail box.

We’ll have Thanksgiving at our house again this year, and it will be pretty much open house for people we love - people whom we haven’t seen enough of during the year.

In the past we hosted Thanksgivings and had lots of people - upward of 30 one year. We borrowed tables from our church, set them up as one long banquet table in our living-dining room, and scrounged chairs. It was lovely.

But after all that cooking - and new ceramic tile floors in the kitchen, a dumb move on our part - I could barely stand for a couple of days. I was younger then, and we don’t have such big crowds any more. (The floors in the kitchen of this house are wood, by the way.) But it was still fun. And we got to see and talk to people we didn’t see as often as we’d like.

Recently people we’ve hosted are more interested (see, I told you I’d bring it back) in the football games on television than the people around the table. These have been people we see perhaps once or twice a year, and I think we have a lot of catching up to do. They obviously think otherwise.

One year I unplugged the television before everyone came, but they figured it out and plugged it back in. I tried flipping the circuit breaker, but it controlled too many other things, so I turned it back on. Another time our TV died, and I put a 13 inch set in the family room. They just sat closer. Much closer. I don’t know if it’s intimacy they fear, or we don’t have enough in common since I don’t care about sports. Isn’t there anything else to talk about? Perhaps they like our food but are uncomfortable around us. I don’t know. They never turned down an invitation, though.

I do know that watching television doesn’t seem to me to be a group activity. Sitting silently in the dark with a group of people may be green, in that only one television is using electricity. But I can watch television by myself, and frequently do.

So the holidays are coming up. We haven’t invited sports fans to Thanksgiving this year. That may be un-American. Too bad.

We’re going, instead, to practice the Art of Conversation.

As always, please feel free to comment below.