Allow me to preface this post with a word about this blog for the strangers that may come across it in their web wanderings. Originally, this was conceived to be a sort of continuous conversation that takes place between a mother and her son. Obviously the author of the previous two posts is the mother, which makes me undoubtedly the son. Though I am unsure of exactly how she thinks, I would venture that we both delight ourselves in a few of our similarities, just as we decry each other for the rest. To wit, we both have a habit of speaking to poor drivers as if the driver was equipped with a radio piece linked directly into whatever car either of us is driving. The habit is indicative of people with excellent senses of humor, since any condemnation of a bad driver must be by rule humorous enough to enlighten the passengers. the habit is also indicative of insufferable know-it-alls who are convinced that no matter what the endeavor, theirs is the right way. So when I am happy with my mother, I compliment her for having a sophisticated sense of humor, but when I am angry with her, I denounce her as a pompous contrarian, and vice versa. It is with this rationale that we will approach the other's posts, albeit more gently.
I've never had a job to mourn. My employment opportunities up to this point have been marked by how much I hated each job and the unique reasons I had for hating each one. So I cannot pretend that I understand the feeling of losing a "real" job. I do not mourn the fact that I'm no longer a baby-sitter or a gopher at a dealership.
But there is an anxiety shared by today's college students that is, in effect, a doppelganger for the anxiety that members of my mother's generation are feeling. While they elder fret that they will lose their jobs and be rendered obsolete, the younger are perpetually in fear that they will never even get a job. This is preposterous, eventually a person actively seeking employment will receive it, although the time it takes seems to be stretching more each day. But sitting in school that preaches the gospel of pre-professionalism, majoring in a subject that is preparing me for...what? Six years ago, this wouldn't have as large a concern, but the more I peruse news sites the more I feel anxious. I believe that today young people are encouraged more and more to place stipulations on their lives; inflexible plans that have to be rigidly in order to stave any number of calamities. It is imperative for one to do this, or major in that. There are times when I regret not attending a smaller liberal arts college, where the level of doubt surrounding my decision to not plan my life past 25 wouldn't be frowned upon.
As for Brett Farve, I grant that his current form is fantastic and a little inspiring. But I've never seen an athlete that has turned himself into a narcissistic publicity circus so adroitly, nor have I ever seen a media or a public so taken in. Jordan, even with his deftly timed faxes and musings about "seeing if I could still school some of these young guys", never got away with such brazen attention whoring. So, while my mother was rooting for Brett, I was elated when he threw that interception, because it was almost divine in its appropriateness. Favre, forever lauded as a "gunslinger" and someone that just "hucks like he's in high school" and been brought down by football's Murphian nature: what can go wrong, will go wrong, which is why you throw the ball away. In the end my favorite media-created story line was completed, that being the Saints as an allegory for the redemptive city. If you watched the viral cameras of Bourbon street, you say people hugging each other and dancing like the time before a certain hurricane. When the Broncos won their first Super Bowl, the rioting was massive, so I was elated to see the kind of togetherness that optimists always believe is the result of a successful championship run. Brett couldn't have created that.
