Evert F. Baumgardner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass , the doorstop dog, is trying to assist the keeper in filling the entertainment void that occurred some years ago when he—the keeper stopped watching TV football games, his thinking at the time being that late in the 4th quarter of his life there must be better ways to spend time than sitting in a recliner watching muscular young men give each other concussions.
There was no concerted effort to replace the football-watching time with something having similar disciplines—set times and win/loose outcomes; and the keeper adjusted to being one of the few cheerful souls on Monday morning after a Packer or Badger loss. He was also freed up from the accumulated resentment toward millionaire NFL team owners who have done their money-grabbing social manipulation so thoroughly that it reaches through colleges and high schools and down to little would-be hero-worshipping quarterbacks in the third grade.
The health aspects of being a fan—sitting and watching instead of getting-up-and-doing, is not something the keeper can get into and still avoid rampant hypocrisy, given his “sitting” record.
The issue may have to do with a late-in-life awareness of the fleeting nature of time, and how it can be so easily wasted and manipulated by commercial interests to the point that the keeper and his ilk don’t seem to have adequate meaningful personal input.
The keeper isn’t sure what he does with the saved football-watching time, but it is spent according to his decisions, and not those of the narcissistic NFL and NCAA and their commercial agents.
So maybe there is not an entertainment void for the keeper after all, but simply another necessary adjustment to dealing with aging, and the recognition that your personal “recliner” time is finite and much too valuable to spend by any dictates other than your own.
The downside of not watching TV football is that to his football-fan friends, the keeper may come off as doltish; but, he insists, not so doltish that he becomes an anti-football evangelical: How absurd it would be for him to advise anyone on how to occupy their “reclined”—some might even say “declined,” time when his seems dominated by napping and reminiscent re-runs?
