Here we are again. You’re in the future. I’m in the past.
Even if I had a Tuesday deadline for the Wednesday issue, it would have to be before the end of the Real Change work day, and about the only votes that could have been announced are from a handful of small towns, like Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, famous for announcing their vote of a couple dozen or so voters minutes after the polls open. There is no way I could know now how the election turned out.
In fact, it is Friday morning. I’m starting at this blank page at 5 awful A way too much M.
I’m not a morning person, I just become one to write, because it gets my blood up.
“Prepare. We attack at dawn.”
So, there you are, at the pinnacle of time, at the tip of the tip of the spear of the invasion of past into future. And here I am, in a cul-de-sac of the past, unable to even watch you on TV. I don’t get the Future Channel on my Ebb and Slosh Digital Broadcast.
All I can really speak authoritatively on is what has happened now, here in Friday past.
Well, what has happened?
The Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. Maybe there’s a sign in that. (Eds. Note: FLY THE W!)
There’s an obvious motivational message that I’m sure won’t be missed. Whenever some team pulls off a long-sought-after victory we get to hear the same thing: See, you can do great things if only you keep at it, it’s just a matter of determination, putting in 110 percent, etc.
The trouble I see with that is that, hello, this took 108 years, and it wasn’t like they weren’t trying for 107 of them. It wasn’t like they had been lying on the couch eating chips and salsa and fighting over the remote.
That wasn’t the Cubs for 107 years, that was me.
I think the real message of this year’s World Series was encapsulated in a few thoughts that struck me during the series as I watched the box scores change.
First, I noticed that the Cubs were not the only team playing. Second, the other team was hitting the ball a lot, and the team that hit the ball the most tended to score higher. Third, people made a big deal about stuff that had nothing to do with which team would play better.
To that last point I may specifically cite the big deal made about the rain delay that happened between the 9th inning of the last game and the final 10th inning.
I’m told that this was arranged in heaven by the petitions of former Chicagoans who died over generations waiting for the Cubs to make it to a World Series, on the theory that the delay helped the Cubs clear their heads and calm their nerves.
This makes not one stitch of sense because: see point one.
There was another team playing, and they had heads to clear and nerves to calm, also.
Human beings love to explain things, and they’ll latch onto ridiculous explanations rather than just leave the unexplained as such.
For 70 years, the explanation for the fact that the Cubs weren’t even getting a chance to play in the World Series was a goat owner who was said to be offended into perpetuity. As soon as they got there and won, we lost the excuse we had for the drought of the past 70 years.
When I am struggling from one failure to the next, it’s said to be because I have no faith, or because I have some character flaw, or because I’m cursed because of something I did wrong. But when I succeed it’s assigned to providence, or the magic of some never before witnessed surge of faith and stick-to-it-ness. How do you put 110 percent of yourself into anything?
The other 10 percent is providential, obviously.
Forget the goat. Here’s the real reason the Cubs won last week: They won because every year there are two teams in the World Series, and one of them has to lose, and the goat didn’t cause the Cubs to be the team that lost.
Chief Wahoo made the Cleveland Indians lose.
We told them to stop using that logo, but they wouldn’t listen.