Into The Gap

 I have, over time, learned to talk the talk. 

Sports. 

I played some football, long before I turned sixteen. I was on my junior high wrestling team. I even went out for track, mostly because it was something to do after school in the spring. 

I was never really good at any of those endeavors. I was a kid who was picked last for most any game, and experienced the charms of being the round, slow kid. 

I was also the son of season ticket holders to the University of Colorado football team. I spent many a Saturday afternoon in those stands. Sometimes I sat with my parents. Sometimes was patrolling the aisles, selling hot dogs or ice cold Coca Cola. And all that time, I was absorbing the culture. Scores, statistics, and hopes for a big win next week. 

In high school, football season was spent in the seats and on the field as part of the marching band that had a better record than the boys scrambling to beat the cross-town rival. But it was in the gymnasium that my love for basketball blossomed. For all the lack of success I witnessed on the gridiron, I was witness to amazing basketball. The Boulder High Panthers won the Colorado State Championship when I was a junior, and came within one ill-fated game of repeating when I was a senior. 

Somewhere in the midst of all this was the looming specter of baseball. The reason my grandparents split up so many years ago. It was from here that I acquired my grandfather's devotion to the Chicago Cubs. It hung in the back of my sports closet, primarily as an amusing anecdote to describe that "wait 'til next year" feeling that all but a very few fans experience each and every season. 

I dragged all of that history out to California where I got to see more than my share of winning from a revitalized Golden State Warriors basketball squad. Championship parades? How about that? Even the Denver Broncos, whose legacy I was also trapped won a few Super Bowls. 

So I learned to talk to others about sports. Because it's so much more interesting than the weather. One particular father who shows up early with his daughters each morning will inevitably ask me, "Didja see the game last night?" 

The honest answer is "No," but I come equipped with decades of cliches and experience that allow me to speak as if I had. Which is where all the talk comes in. It is a bonding moment that doesn't cost a penny to connect. The price I pay is that I can expect that the next day he will return and ask what I thought about the most recent headline on the sports page. 

I suppose I could throw a wrench in the works and ask him if he's seen the most recent Paul Thomas Anderson film. Or his opinion on tariffs. 

But that's not why we're here, exactly. We are here to find ways to bridge a gap. 

Thank you, sports.