by Kevin Burton
Memories aren’t what they used to be, but I’m good with it.
For some reason one of the headlines on a story in Sports Illustrated has stayed with me down through the years. I used it above: “Win Some, Lose Some, Split The Rest.”
My memory said that headline went with a story about baseball doubleheaders. Makes sense, right? But I looked it up and it was actually about a boxing match.
My mind took in that sports data and everything else it had to absorb over the years, and stored it in the way that made the most sense. I have no need to remember anything about boxing.
Comparing notes with old beep baseball teammates this winter, I have found upon further research that my memory of events was not just off, but way off on the wrong track.
Sometimes I want to curl up on a soft blanket, like one of my cats, close my eyes and close out the world, like drawing a curtain. That would eliminate the need to reconcile such cul-de-sacs of memory.
The thought bubble above my head reads, “blow it out your ears, or not, whatever, just do it quietly and leave me out of it.”
There I am not a picture of hostility, but of contentment. This is inability to fix the world; feeling that urge to try drain from me.
Near the end of the song “Then Came You” by The Spinners and Dionne Warwick, you can hear Spinners lead singer Philippe Wynne sing “I’m a contented man.’
I always thought that was funny, not really a rock and roll kind of a thing to say. I thought “contented” was an adjective for a cat, not a man. The line hung strangely as the denouement of a surging hit song.
Now, many days contented is all my heart can pull off, the best that I can hope for. I see it differently now. I am good with that.
Alexa made me a play-list of my favorite songs by the Fab 4 Beatles, after the breakup of the band. It’s great to have the list.
But I couldn’t get Alexa to understand that I wanted the play list called “Post-Beatles.” I gave up trying to convince her. So now I say, “Alexa play my play list, Beatles” and it starts right into “Blow Away” by George Harrison, goes to “Listen To What The Man said,” by Paul McCartney and moves on to “It Don’t Come Easy” by Ringo Starr.
She can call it what she wants. It’s all good. Just play the tunes.
Sometimes I have to rise up and wrestle with life’s great issues and burdens. Have to protect myself from non-masking, non-distancing co-workers, for example.
Sometimes I don’t have to and I can, figuratively, curl up like my cats do.
So my Bengals out of the clear blue sky made the Super Bowl (you knew this would circle around to the Bengals, right?), then lost that Super Bowl, in large part because of a phantom pass interference penalty against them that shifted momentum toward Los Angeles.
Cue the rage. Except Cincinnati’s second-half lead was constructed largely on an even worse non-call in their favor. That was the offensive pass interference play when Cincy receiver Tee Higgins spun the d-back’s head like a lazy Susan on his way to a 75-yard touchdown.
So what am I supposed to think? No team with an offensive line as porous as theirs is supposed to even be in the Super Bowl, let alone win it. Cincinnati was way ahead of schedule anyway, right?
Win some, lose some, split the rest. I am good with that.
This of course is a passing mode, like a cycle on your washing machine that you go into, but move through.
I don’t know of any blogs that were launched by a sigh. But the better ones will acknowledge a sigh when it colors the sky for a day.
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