Superbowl mania: count me out

As I was working out in the gym last Friday, a fellow next to me turned around and asked, “Hey, do you know what time the game starts on Sunday? Is it at 1:00 or 1:30?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “What game would that be?”

The guy gave me a strange, bewildered look and just walked away, apparently either confused or astonished.

Later, of course, I realized he was talking about–what else?–the Superbowl.

“Gee,” I later thought, “that guy at the gym must have thought I was pretty weird.” It must have looked pretty bad. He might have even thought I was gay. I mean, here is this guy (me), above average in weight, strength and height, working out at a gym, and yet completely oblivious to the Superbowl’s official starting time. In fact, apparently not even remotely aware of it at all. “What game?”

What’s a guy to think? After all, this hardly seems manly. The fellow might as well have asked a woman about the Superbowl’s official starting time. He probably would have had better luck, too. I had no idea. Not a clue.

Superbowl mania: count me out. I could never really get into it. I stopped paying attention to it about 10 years ago, after losing approximately $200 worth of cash and goods to my good friend John S. Blanco. (It was San Francisco vs. the Bengals. I foolishly bet on the Bengals.)

I later got Mr. Blanco back, though: $300 cash on an arm-wrestling bet, which he completely lost. He went down in about 1.5 seconds, maybe less. I trained hard for that bet. It was a valuable lesson I learned early on: Never let your hopes, your money, or your happiness, depend on outside factors beyond your control.

Vicarious living, basking in the reflected glory of others–these things are not for me. I could care less if John Elway threw a miraculous 50-yard, Hail Mary pass. So what? So he re-negotiates his employment contract for an additional $50 million? So what does that do for me? How do I personally benefit from his pass?

Naturally, it means nothing to me. It doesn’t benefit me at all, not in any way. I could care less.

Which reminds me of a very interesting phenomenon. Ask a big team sports fan how his team did. If his team won, the sports fan will more than likely exclaim, “Great! We won!” But if his team lost, he will more than likely–dejected–mutter out, exasperated, “They lost.”

Notice: When the team wins, it’s “We,” as in “We won.” But when the team loses, it’s usually “They”–as in, “They lost.”

With me, however, it’s always “I.”

“What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it?” wrote Ayn Rand in Anthem. “What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? . . . What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am to bow, to agree and to obey?

“But I am done with this creed of corruption.

“I am done with the monster of ‘We,’ the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.

“And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

“This god, this one word:

“’I.’”

Ain’t that beautiful?