MICHAEL ATCHISON

Losing My Mind at Christmastime

Michael Atchison

Sometimes I just feel so stupid, like such a complete schmuck, that I should care so much for something so trivial, that a game should do this to me. On Tuesday night, I cursed, I cheered, I paced, I jumped up and down, I exalted, I fell into a heap of helpless, hopeless goo. I grieved for a moment. I grabbed another beer. I muttered. I stuttered. I ran to the computer for catharsis. And for what reason? Simply because a bunch of men half my age played a game alternatingly heartbreaking and thrilling. A game that I had no control over, no part in, that will have no effect on the war on terrorism or the big friggin’ hole in the ozone or my ability to pay the mortgage. Yet because of the way this game makes me stupid, for those moments, I cared more about it than all of those incalculably more consequential things.

It’s amazing how much two points mean. Two points are the difference between triumph and tragedy. 71-70 is a disaster. 72-71 would have been a masterpiece. It’s amazing how different two halves can be. One twenty minute span is a parade of fools, a bunch of guys stumbling around looking for their car keys. In the next twenty minutes, they’re Vikings, great and noble warriors trying to climb out of the hole that the stumbling fools dug for them. And they almost got there. Almost. So close, so damned heartbreakingly, stupefyingly close that it’s almost worse than not making the ascent at all. The Vikings gave me hope, and hope is no good when the door slams shut at the end. Hope, my friends, stinks. Damn you, you stinking, heartbreaking Vikings.

I want to find the silver lining. I want to sell you a bill of goods. I want to tell you that rallying from 21 down means that everything is swinging up, that Quin Snyder has found his rotation, that Travon Bryant is the king of those friggin’ Vikings, that Jimmy McKinney has grown up as a point guard. But what can I possibly know? As we’ve firmly established, I’m an irrational, ridiculous, stammering, slobbering fool. A guy like me, a guy who is so moved by a kids’ game, should not be allowed to roam the streets. I’m a danger to myself. I may be a danger to you. Right now, if you’re in Missouri or any one of the eight bordering states (yeah, there are eight, ain’t it amazing?), go inside and lock your doors. Because I’m out there and I can’t be trusted.

The people in sports media are really good at telling you what you just saw with your own eyes, but they usually aren’t good at much else, and so what good are they really? There’s nothing more boring than a guy recapping a game that you just saw with your own bloodshot, disbelieving eyes, and so I won’t do that. For one thing, I can’t even quite make sense of what I saw. And for another thing, well, I can’t remember the other thing, because as we’ve established, I’m a psychopath or sociopath or some such thing that allows a basketball game keep him up late at night when he should be pounding eggnog and listening to Phil Spector’s “A Christmas Gift for You,” or whatever well-adjusted, normal people who aren’t consumed by A RIDICULOUS, STUPID, NEFARIOUS, UTTERLY COLD-HEARTED CHILDREN’S GAME do at this time of year. Or so I’m told.

No, for me, this time of year is for hanging on every possession in the last two minutes involving a bunch of people that I do not know, a group of men from an entirely different generation, two dozen kids with whom I would have a hard time even having a sensible conversation about music, because I do not know what the whole feud between Jay-Z or Nas or Ludacris or whomever is about, and because they’ve never heard of Joe Henry or Grant Green or the Meters. We barely even speak the same language. While I’m talking about dollar-cost averaging and tax-deferred college savings plans, they’re talking about other stuff that I won’t even try to replicate here, because it will only reveal me as the black-socks-with-white-tennis-shoes geezer into which I am inevitably evolving against my will.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, or so the neighbors tell me. I just mumble something about losing another Braggin’ Rights game, and they nonchalantly back away and walk on the other side of the street, as if there's something wrong with being a disheveled, shuffling, muttering man in the suburbs. They are heathens. They do not understand my pain.

Man, I love this game. And not just college basketball. I mean THIS game, this annual ritual against Illinois. Illini, I salute you. You won it fair and square, or so the scoreboard says, and it really doesn’t matter what anyone else says. The scoreboard is judge and jury. Don’t mind the disheveled, shuffling, muttering man in the black and gold pajamas. Soon he’ll be the Kansans’ problem.

And now, the hour is late, and I just want to go to bed. By the time you read this, I will have had my slumber. But I already know that it won’t be a restful sleep. At least twice, it is guaranteed, I’ll sit straight up, and I’ll realize that it wasn’t just a dream, that they really rallied from down 40-19 to tie it a 67-all, only to lose it 71-70. And I’ll ache for a moment, and I’ll think about the mortgage and the ozone and the soldiers in far-flung places, and I’ll realize how lucky I am that I can wallow in this ridiculous, torturous, soul-lifting pleasure, this great and magnificent game.

Happy Holidays, Tiger fans. May peace be with you and yours during the most wonderful time of the year.