The Conversation

Tonight, while waiting for the Belmont bus to take me home, a man spoke to me unprovoked, as if we’d been speaking for a while. I had sized him up as I was walking over. The first thing I noticed was his Detroit Red Wings jacket. I considered starting a hockey conversation, but first I wanted to check if he was homeless. Well, homeless isn’t the word I’m looking for. I mean drunk, poor guy on the street who isn’t quite sure how to make sense to people. This wasn’t that kind of guy. He could have been drunk, I wasn’t sure, and he hadn’t shaved in a while, but, then, neither have I. His hands shook as he lit his cigarettes. It was a covered bus stop, and I leaned against a holographic car ad. I’m okay with cars having advertisements, though your average car ad is 98-100% imagery, 0-2% facts about the car. There aren’t too many types of cars… ok there are zillions of car types, but I imagine that when you’re buying a car, there are a limited, containable number of models that you seriously consider. Maybe it’s kind of like picking colleges. You select a few favorites and then hope that one accepts you.

I had no New Jersey Devils regalia or paraphernalia or anything that might have suggested I knew a thing about sports. I was wearing a slightly too small jacket, a purple sweatshirt, black cargo pants, brown shoes and a small beige backpack. The man turned to me and said, “The Blackhawks got eliminated tonight.” He had practically continued the conversation I imagined as I walked over where I started by asking if he was a Red Wings fan. He never actually said that he was, but he referred to the Wings as “us.” We talked about hockey until the bus came. As he payed to get on, he told the busdriver: “Blackhawks got eliminated tonight.” I really wonder what the busdriver thought that meant. I doubt it really registered. We talked about hockey on the bus, until he got off four blocks later.

I can’t always tell what to make of sports in our world. It’s a story generator that has nothing to do with anything else. Inevitably we find humanity within the system. We find truth in the way these humans follow the mental structure of the game. Stay on the green part, not the grey part. When this thing happens, run in a straight line to that pillow on the ground. Watch out for the others, but they’ll only get in your way under certain conditions. Quickly it turns into a language and stories, reports and poems are written with the cameras on and the crowd screaming. That’s what I wanted to say- that I can’t quite place my feelings about sports in this world, but it is definitely something larger than itself. Here this man was, and the only thing on his mind, the thing he wanted to tell everyone was that there was a violent ice dance on the other side of town.