We started playing fantasy sports in 2002. That is, my family and I. And Kelvin Freely.
After years of radio silence, my father, my brothers and I had, with the click of a mouse, an instantaneous forum with which to get to know each other again. Or really, for the first time.
Say what you might about the time-wasting and inherent lameness of the jock-dom that is the fantasy-sportser's bread and butter. There is nothing that brings a splintered group of guys together to talk around the campfire faster than the bulletin board posting feature ubiquitous to those pretend leagues. My brothers and I, long out of communication, dived in.
Of course the hard topics, the topics you don't want to really get into with your family: politics, religion, culture, social values and such, made their way into our postings and promptly opened up jars and jars of slithery, sore-festering worms. One brother, ex-Presbyterian minister, the other, a California public school teacher, and in the middle of the three sons, a father disaffected by the conservative party he had always voted for.
The conversations ran deep and hard. At one point that first year, my oldest brother and I traded scathing email essays delineating our differing views on gay rights and the Iraq war.
Cutting words, hard charges, massively opposing perspectives laid bare. It was tough. I think we are both still kind of rattled by it. We found out just how awkward our relationship could become if we kept on at it.
But my point is that I remember saying something in a posting that year. We were talking about the upcoming 2004 election amidst trade rumors of Dirk and Dwyane for Elton and Stephon.
I recall posting that the main issue for me, the one that trumps all others, was the environment. It still is. The financial thing is a crisis, yes. The Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Zimbabwe, Russia and Sudan are all important, yes.
But there is nothing, nothing more pressing than the ruin of our very habitat. The place we live. How we live. The food we eat. The air we breathe. And of course, to me everything stems from that.
It is one of the topics that the candidates don't talk about. Or talk about enough. The only real mention you get by either Obama or McCain comes in the confines of energy independence. I get the feeling McCain doesn't even take it seriously, while Obama has it pretty low on the political priority list.
We do not really talk politics in the fantasy sports postings anymore. We can all pretty much guesstimate where the others guys are coming from. I hope my father is still a battleground state, at least for me. But I hesitate to ask for fear of disappointment. If it is the wrong answer, I don't want to know.
1 comment:
half of all plausible reality is like a monster under the bed. We dive under our blankets and hope it away. There is no other way, is there? If the monster doesn't even really exist, then how can we deal with it logically? What a waste of time we've all had trying to prove that there is indeed a monster.
When is the next civil war? What have we learned from Quebec? I really feel the only solution is to divide into smaller countries. A camel is a horse made by a committee. We are a big autistic camel that shits more than it eats and eats more than it has.
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