Perspective. It is just a game. We had some frightening thunderstorms move through here at about 5pm eastern. Since I live in the country, we have a lot of trees, many of them large. During Hurricane Sandy, of those massive trees sent a branch through my skylight like a missile, missing me by about a foot. I would have most certainly been dead (I was later hospitalized for an injury trying to tarp the skylight from underneath to keep our house from being flooded).
The trees swayed as badly as they did during Sandy, and the power went out almost immediately. I gathered my son to an interior room with my wife, just as I did moments before the tree branch came through that skylight during Sandy. Thankfully, this time the trees held, and the storm passed..
Thought the power might be out for awhile, so I went to town for supplies (nearly all the stores in town have generators; I do not since power outages are actually relatively rare in my immediate area), and found my main way to town completely blocked off by fallen trees! Was able to go the other way to town (there are only two ways, and fortunately the latter path was open) and get some food for my son (anything we had at home we needed to cook) Listed to most of the first half of the game traveling to and from town, but can't say that my mind was on the game much.
Returned home, were it was dark and getting cold (the cold front that passed through knocked the temperature down by 25 degrees from 68 to 43, and dropping). Though it was only about 9, my wife was already in bed, and my son was in there with her. He hasn't been in our bed unless I am out of town, since the hurricane, so I knew the storm (and probably memories of the hurricane) had shaken him up a bit. Thus, I didn't want to go back out to the car to hear the second half, and didn't want to stream and drain my phone (already on its backup battery) so I used the low-tech ESPN play-by-play function to follow the game Again, with no live TV, my mind not completely on the game, the loss was likely not as impactful as it might have otherwise been.
Checked into the board and saw that was not as much postgame trolling as usual (except for Hans from Iowa, bless his heart), so I made a few posts and put my son to bed a little after his 10pm bedtime. Tried to go asleep after a long day, but my son kept coming in with his flashlight to "check" on us, so I asked him if he wanted to sleep in our bed. Now, our bed is a queen, so him sleeping with us means my taking a small corner of the bed in which to attempt to sleep, which is generally unsuccessful. I may have slept an hour at most until 3am, when my wife woke me up not for the reason I thought she would (to start a fire because it was getting cold) but for a better reason (the power, which was not scheduled to be restored unto 6pm on Sunday, was back on!).
I stumbled out of the bedroom, put my son back in his own bed, and reset the clocks and put the flashlghts and lanterns away. The TV was on in the front of the house (my son had not turned it off in the scramble to vacate that room when the storm hit, and I decided to turn on BTN to see if the BIG show was on. Instead they were replaying the game, which was at about the 6 minute mark of the second half, so I decided to watch it.
Knowing the outcome, again I wasn't all that crushed (but of course I didn't know about the non-foul call on Bryant's last layup, the touch foul call on us when one routinely sees people tackled at the end of games with no call, most recently at Iowa-Indiana, the missed FT that wasn't by their Bryant, and the oh-so-close half court shot by our Bryant. etc.) But I was proud of the way our guys came back after that massive run by Indiana (we have had similar-- but not as big--runs against our opponents, and most have folded up their tents after such runs), and I thought that Indiana truly deserved the win at the end (this wasn't to me like Notre Dame, where we just folded against their press at the end, but more about Indiana's effort and good luck late).
And, then, as the BTN announcers provided the not-so-happy recap of the game, I thought about how fortunate I was to attend my first Northwestern sporting event in over 25 years at Yankee Stadium (as many you are aware, family medical issues result in my working from home and greatly restrict my travel), and I thought about all of that purple confetti at the end and the players signing the alma mater to the many Northwestern fans who had stuck around for the trophy presentation, et al. on a cold and windy day, including myself. I then thought about how fortunate I was to be a Northwestern fan at the present time, as not only did our football team win a bowl game (which I was able to see live!) but that our basketball team may go to the NCAA tournament in the same year, after thinking for many years that they would never go in my lifetime! And, even if they do not go to the Dance this season, I now know that such a feat will be accomplished sooner rather than later.
But most of all, I thought about my wife and son, who did not even know about the game and its outcome, but whom I wouldn't trade for any wife and son in the world. I hope that you all have people in of your lives that you would not trade for anyone else, this day, and always!
