For a blogger of some heritage relative to the medium – yes, I am now part of Canada’s blogging heritage being well into my fifth year of it – I hope I have no sense of my own importance. Sure, I did once…but that was 2004 when bloggers were going to rule the planet, leading through words alone, thrilling with my intellectual purity and strident adherence to the one or two ideas I had, striding over cities and past agricultural valleys like the uber-man I clearly had created myself to be…through blogging. No, it became far less rapidly apparent than it should have that the clickity-click of the pajamamen was only what it appeared to be. So I settled into that, relaxed and accepted it for what it was. After, say, 2005 or so.
Which makes me think of that poor schlep of an NBA ref whose name popped up during a FBI wiretap of some mobsters talking about gambling. And even if it did not happen that way, I like to think that it did because it paints the problem so clearly. As with the vanity of bloggers, the root of the cheating ref is that sin of self-importance. Why does some git who gets to blow a whistle for traveling or makes that call between whether the ball was falling or still on the ascent when it was blocked think he deserves more, think he should be as wealthy as the players around him? I have seen this first hand. I have known an inordinate number of lawyers who ended up in the big house or worse through the inability to understand that the client’s money is in that pile and yours is in that smaller stack over there. Heck my “financial adviser” at a small town Ontario bank branch in the mid-90s ended up face down in the river one Saturday morning after it was discovered Friday night that there was an extra 3 million in the wrong bank account.
People like to think they are more than they are. Which is weird. If I have come to any conclusions now that the majority of my years on earth are past me it is that most people deeply misconstrue what this whole experience means. Not in an evil bad way but a far simpler way. Which is not far off what the Book of Job was telling us all along: we cannot even see the strings around us let along know who or what is pulling them. The fool thinks otherwise and walks around with reversed mirrored glasses, convinced and sometimes even finding a career in writing newspaper columns or as talk-show host.
But that ref thought he could pull strings and never stand out. Rewrite rules for gain. So now an entire sport – and not one that I particularly loved – is thrown in the grey zone with professional wrestling and figure skating. It gets you thinking about what else is around you that can be monkeyed by one or two people as easily as you can shift figures between a lawyer’s trust fund and general ledger or by making up mortgages for people who do not exist. You have to have a situation where there is plenty of rule calling. The NBA ref blows the whistle more than once a minute. Who else so closely controls the situation? A ref in soccer called 53 fouls is the Argie-Chile game the other day. Someone else calculates your pay packet deductions, your mortgage payment, your electricity bill. Does the specter of the cheat infuse it all? That is why games ought to be so good – that marble is either out of the circle or it is not, the blowing pin is standing or it is not. We turn to games we play or watch for certainty as much as honing or enjoying skill. There should be more with less chance for cheats – whether of the whistle blowing or blabby false prophet varieties. So bowl. Bowl your hearts out and know there is good in the world. That is all I can tell you in these troubled time. Bowl.
