I wrote the original draft of this post a week ago under the influence of an adrenaline and endorphins high from an unlikely triumph. Today, reality has returned in the cruelest fashion, a very big buzz kill, requiring a redraft.

For those of you out there who support sports teams not by choice but because they are ‘your teams’ due to upbringing, locality, or some other ingrained reason you might be able to empathize with this post. For those of you who have ‘your teams’ and those teams happen to be perennial doormats you can further understand my frustration. And for those of you from areas with an inferiority complex – say the fly over country of the United States, the Pacific Northwest, or anywhere in Canada – you can totally relate.

Last week I spent four sun drenched autumn hours inside in front of an oversized television wishing, hoping, and willing a team of mediocre quality to beat a far superior team. In the last six game seconds my team finally made the pain of a 19-year loss drought vanish. Even though I was inside, my neighbors on my sleepy street probably wondered whether I was experiencing an uncontrolled spastic event as I ran, jumped, and crouched with football in hand to and fro across the living room in front of the room’s windows. I was excited, and for a moment my life made more sense, the glory of victory!

This week I spent four sun drenched autumn hours inside in front of an oversized television wishing, hoping, and willing a team of mediocre quality to beat a less (base on last week’s performance) far superior team. In the last thirty game seconds my team, as a good friend would say, ‘snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory’. A loss, no championship consideration this year – 44 years and counting.

The team has a bonafide national MVP. But my headache continues, because MVPs come from champions.

As my wife pealed my body off the floor after she scolded me a number of times for throwing everything not bolted down against the wall and the phact that I used every profanity in the book, I was back to the familiar – we lost. No mater the what ifs, it was not going to change the final score.

The real question is – Why is it that a happiness of an adult male partially depends on a 19-year-olds ability to catch, throw, or punt a football? As this awful, but conceivable, loss was finally posted in the record books amidst a shocked home team crowd, I was distraught – unsure – disappointed – lost.

I will wake up tomorrow in the same fortunate state as today, but I will have to shake the thoughts ‘why not this year?’ Is it right to want something this un-important (in the scheme of all that goes on in this world)? As I examine it thoroughly my happiness is truly dependant on a number of other factors that are totally devoid of a person’s ability to catch a football, but a catch adds (against my psychological will) to my happiness.

I believe I am hooked into this madness. I do not want to be here, but I have to accept the things I cannot change to move forward and grow in life. Is it possible? Is it reasonable? I suffer from the inferiority complex of believing in ‘my team’. I am destine for disappointment, but maybe I am prepared. Maybe? But, really, win! Or cut me loose to listen to opera.