Earlier this summer, on my deck out in a rural part of southern Ohio, I was having a drink, watching the wind brush through a line of trees along the front of my yard. The Ash Borer is only evident in a fraction of them at this point so most are still alive and green. The only other movements were birds flying low and fast from spot to spot, keeping out of sight of larger winged predators. I was out of focus, not really thinking about anything, when I heard a buzzing sound from my left. All of the sudden there was a hummingbird eyeing me from about a foot in front of my face. For a split second the bird sized me up, decided I wasn’t what it was looking for, and buzzed off towards the woods. It was surreal and I’ll never forget it.
What was the hummingbird looking for? Did its little humming friends dare it to peck me on the snout and it lost its nerve at the last moment? Was it looking for nectar, and thought maybe I was hiding some in my face? Had it just never come across a human before and was taking a mental snapshot of this unwieldy goofy ass creature? Who knows? Maybe it was just saying hello.
As summer busted open the door and strode into the room, I noticed something else happens out in the country that I had completely forgotten about. Something buried in my childhood memories of gathering darkness and what happened when nighttime came along. Fireflies. Every night they had wild ass block parties in the trees in front of my house. It was like the world’s most sporadic sequence of beautiful malfunctioning string lighting.
I don’t know if these things were so vital to me because I never got them living in a city, or whether as I grow older I start to appreciate things that are out of my control, that would be happening whether I was there or not, that are part of the fabric of a place I live in.
Football is a big part of the fabric of life in Ohio, a fundamental constant that isn’t going anywhere, and its arrival is imminent. I haven’t experienced the complete weight of its orbital pull on me in several years. In New York I could step out of football’s gravity when I wanted to because a lot of people didn’t give two shits about any of it. That seems more unlikely now living in a place where a vocal and wide majority of the population cares about the sport. I don’t think it’s always a bad thing for the specter of something you thoroughly enjoy to be constantly present, but it will probably take some getting used to. And there is something else about sports fandom that I haven’t been able to figure out. How do you avoid being pigeonholed by people you meet into the SPORTBRO stereotype? I don’t really want someone to think that what defines me is how my favorite team is doing. But if that’s the case, and I am going to get lumped in with some unsavory people, it might as well be with my alma mater.
Ohio State is hopefully going to being majestically good this year. Fans of the team have had several months to acclimate themselves to this probable reality. But with their high expectations comes a sort of backlash that irritates me. People are going to expect them to always hit the high notes. Which is insane considering it is an imperfect sport that they only seemed to get a good grip on in their final three games of last season. I’ve basked in their title glory all winter, spring and summer and I have no plans to stop basking just because a new season has started. Last year doesn’t get erased just because it isn’t current. You don’t stop listening to a classic album as soon as a band releases something new. You just have to make more space for both things.
Everyone says that Ohio State has to win everything again this year for it to be a successful year. I certainly hope they do, but I don’t think the bar should ever be raised that high in sports. There should always be room for some error, because without the lows how do you even fully appreciate the highs. Perfection, if it ever happened, which it doesn’t, would wash out a lot of the exciting and wonderful parts of sports.
On the other end of the spectrum is the Bengals. They march in place, not understanding there is a wall directly in their path, whether I care or not. For the last year or two I have actively avoided knowing anything about them. I have no idea who they drafted or signed or let go or who is injured or who is on the come up. I don’t care. I am allergic to the NFL as a corporation. I can’t bear to watch the media coverage of the sport as some holier than thou institution instead of, you know, a sports league that should encourage fun instead of dead seriousness. And yet, on Sundays I will still watch every Bengals game because I am a stupid self-defeating person that cannot escape my own morbid fascination with their Sisyphean journey up the playoff hill. I doubt it will ever change for me or for them.
Time might just be a mental construction but the seasons tells us that it moves forward one way or the other. Summer is inching back out through the same unhinged doorway it busted through, and Fall will soon slip past it and settle in.
