Desperation and Falsehood

For perhaps the tenth year in a row, I am victorious. I am ecstatic with my secret little accomplishment. This success gives me perhaps way more pleasure than it should.

We’re well past “The Super Bowl” for 2011, and once again I never knew the names of the teams which played in it. Who won? I did!

I was able to ignore that idolatrous cultural oddity almost entirely. I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation about the absence of cheerleaders this year, but I still don’t know who the teams were. Don’t call and tell me, O.K.?

Regardless of my resistance, the spectacle does have an impact on me, on my psyche at least.

Here’s one thing that happened: On the evening of the big game, regularly scheduled events at church were cancelled.

That’s right. Leadership at my church, St. Peter Historic Roman Catholic Church right here in Greeley Colorado, cancelled Religious Education for grade schoolers and two other events geared for high school and college-aged young people.

Imbued with the predictable righteous indignation, I pressed for details. I found that the cancellations were done out of sad resignation. Previously, the adults volunteering to conduct these youth events had tried to continue in spite of “The Game.” They got shut out. No one showed. No one.

Here’s the question: How is “The Super Bowl” that important? It is beyond me why this absurd spectacle is given almost universal attention.

One year my neighbor suddenly bolted out the door of his apartment, screaming at the top of his voice, running around the parking lot barefoot, in his underwear, waving his arms in the air. We didn’t figure out until the next day that this had been his reaction to the outcome of “The Game.”

My dad loved football, or said he did. If I’m not mistaken, he was a charter member of the Denver Broncos’ season ticket club. He attended many, many games both at home and away.

In an attempt to buy in to his interest, in 1975 I acquired a huge Sylvania television set and faithfully watched pro football every Sunday afternoon.

I mistakenly thought that my knowledge of the details of “the game” would give me something to talk about with Dad during our Sunday evening calls to Brighton. I could never seem to know the right facts or who-won-who previously.

In those days long distance telephone was costly, so the silence I heard was expensive. My effort did not please him at all.

That little lesson with Dad was like almost all the other lessons with him. He could tell instinctively that I really didn’t give an obese rodent’s posterior about pro football. It was I being false, desperate; the telephone silence wasn’t his fault, it was mine.

‘False’

Just in case you didn’t know this:

The concordance of the Bible names sixty (60) places in scripture in which the word “false” is used.

In addition, we also find 15 uses of the word “falsehood,” 21 uses of “falsely” and one use of “falsifying.” Then there are “false accusation,” “false apostles,” “false brethren” and “false Christ.” We also find “false prophet,” “false teacher” and “false witness.”

The Bible is fairly strong on the concept of falsehood, wouldn’t you agree? Stands to reason, since in science (logic class, part of Philosophy 101) we learned that anything that is not true is false.

You think I’m going back into “truth vs. fiction” don’t you? Well you’re off the hook. Can’t seem to pound the point through, so I have to let up. For a while.

Desperation

I apparently don’t have the olfactory skills to recognize it, but to some folks desperation does have an odoriferous aroma.

Come back with me more than 30 years. I was one desperate little horny puppy. Man, it was tough. I’d look at a pile of rocks and wonder if there was a snake in it.

I went to strip joints. I tried to strike up conversation with women camped next to me in the Sawtooth Mountains. I talked to women in bars, restaurants, at work.

Perhaps they didn’t even know what they were smelling, but every female I approached in those post-divorce days could apparently detect an unpleasant odor, a warning stench. Women avoided me universally.

Finally, through grace from God, I realized why I was such a loser with women, why “I’ve been a flop with chicks since 1956.” (Thanks to the song Love Potion #9.)

I sat myself down and promised me that I would get over it. I resigned myself. I thought I might well be single for the rest of my life, but I was braced for it. This mad and futile pursuit of ephemeral feminine companionship was making me crazy – and I wasn’t getting any lovin’ either.

Differently than other self-made vows, this one actually took. I quit running all over town chasing waitresses. I quit hitting on barmaids. I quit looking longingly at coeds walking home from class. I quit asking women, “Does your husband mind if you date?”

I didn’t give up my yearning for feminine company, really. I simply and successfully gave up on desperation.

Almost immediately, I met Laura. She didn’t seem to think I smelled funny. At least, my personal aroma probably wasn’t desperation. Wow. That’s going on 30 years ago.

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Word of the week: Ephemeral. It’s from the Greek and Latin, ephemeros, short lived. To us it means transitory, perhaps even vaguely defined, elusive, difficult to perceive, as the ever-changing order of the stars in the heavens.