Where Obsessions are Born

Mr. Edmond's thoughts on his fanaticism compelled me to resurrect and revise this piece:

October 1974.

How had this happened? Who were these people, anyway?  What were they really like?

By the time I was old enough to learn the rules of football, I had already begun to form complicated ideas about my parents. I watched Mom drink a Manhattan, smoke her filterless Camel and complete the Times puzzle without so much as peek in the dictionary.  I had already garnered a sense of her as a brilliant woman who was more than a little bored with her life.  Dad would go to the Jets game, but it was actually she who explained the rules of football to me as we watched a game together on TV.  She was more dynamic than my father but left to the stifling confines of her home and her children, she remained a little stuck.

Dad was gentler, more careful in his words than she, but more remote. Sometimes he seemed to be in a different world when I spoke to him, and Mom had to sometimes remind him that Your son is asking you a question. Especially through our autumns and winters, his mind seemed somewhere else, possessing a darker quality that I came to suspect was due to his football team.

I knew it was, in fact.  While waiting with me in the hospital waiting room as Mom was giving birth to my little brother, my grandmother opened up a Life magazine and pointed to an article about Joe Namath.

She pointed.  “That’s your Daddy’s friend,” she said.

Daddy’s friend. It made sense that my father would be friends with a man who occupied so many of his thoughts. When he arrived home from work in the evenings I would greet him, but he would no sooner have removed his coat than he would immediately announce to everyone:  “Damned Namath’s got to have surgery again…"  It was as if he had visited the patient himself earlier in the day and discussed the procedure with him.  I knew that the Jets were like children from another marriage with whom I had to learn to share my father. It was his vulnerable place.

I would see him prepare for each game, week after week. If it were an away game, he would sit pensively in front of its broadcast on NBC. If it were a home game, he would vanish psychologically at church, preferring to go stoically through the motions of Mass as if he were meditating on something else while the priest droned on.  What was he thinking about? Perhaps his mind would drift to the thought of first seeing the field as he walked out of the Loge section tunnel of Shea Stadium, of seeing #12 warm up before the game began.

Then Dad would literally disappear.  He donned his green knit wool Jets hat, his blue Paddington coat, his binoculars, his thermos and flask and leave us in Merrick while he made for Queens.  Was he, as Wordsworth said of his younger self, "more like a man/Flying from something that he dreads, than one/Who sought the thing he loved?"  Perhaps it was the other way round.  I couldn't tell.  He was a man bearing the expression of one going toward something on which his life depended. It was, I realize now, like staring into my own future.  Though of course I didn't know that. 

So when there was an away game on NBC against the New England Patriots in Foxboro, I found him positioned in his usual spot, on the sofa. I sat next to him on the living room rug. He was in the middle of his away game ritual, shining his shoes for that week. He lay newspaper on top of the rug and worked diligently, never really allowing his straining eyes leave the game. He made these non-lingual noises like primal grunts and gasps for air that deepened as the drama unfolded.

Or rather what passed for drama.  This Jets-Patriots game cannot be compared to their contests today.  There was no great rivalry between them then.  This was one of those games where two mediocre teams are trying very hard not to win. But through an otherwise listless contest, Joe Namath struck David Wright for a touchdown pass, and the Jets went ahead 21-13 in the third quarter. Then the Patriots added a field goal.  Only a little time remained.

Dad just kept shining his shoes. He wore an old white athletic sock like a mitten over his right hand, spitting onto it and circling a pattern into the can of polish with the tip of the sock.  He dexterously buffed each shoe as his tongue peeked out the corner of his mouth.  Suddenly Patriots quarterback Jim Plunkett began driving into Jets territory. The clock crawled through to the two-minute warning, and I could hear Dad making taut sounds of barely muted anguish.

“Don’t blow the lead,” he whispered like a prayer. “Jesus, God Almighty. Please.  Not again.”

Then, when play resumed, Plunkett threw for Randy Vataha in the end zone, but Rich Sowells of the Jets was there to intercept the ball instead. And just like that, it was over. The Jets had won. Instantly, Dad leaped to his feet with his arms raised high above his head - his right hand was still covered by a sock stained with shoeshine – as he made a ponderous sound that emanated through the top of his head.

Uuuuuuuunnnngghhhhhhhhh!

Many, many years later, I would recognize it as the sound of cosmic relief, like the sound a man makes in climactic joy.

The Jets would then go on to win every remaining game of the 1974 season, and I followed each one on TV, even when Dad went to Shea with my Uncle Mike.

Every addiction begins with a moment like this – when you observe a user react with the rush of biochemical euphoria that you then want for yourself. This was what obviously made Dad passionate, and now I was ready.

So much for peace of mind.

Comments

[aprilmae]

I often wonder how my children will view me when they are adults. I try to imagine what memories will be the most lasting. Your description of your mother so closely reflects my own mother- the adult understanding of how her life was too small for her. Also, your father's habits are so similar to my dad's, down to the tongue peeking out of his mouth.

Your piece reminded me how closely our children watch us - how our obsessions and passions shape them. Is it possible to consciously alter your behavior so as to not pass on negative traits when so much of our everyday habits exist subconsciously?

I enjoyed your post so mcuh. Yours and Edmonds's insight helps me make some sense of the activity that leaves me alone with my children almost every Sunday!

[James Dugan]

Priceless piece of memorabilia that should be given as a present. It was for me. I am fascinated with the shining of the shoes. Shoes were everything to my father and my uncles. Shoes and belts. They were the things that would get my father's ire if you wanted to test his attention. I have grown a distaste for both.

I loved how he needed an activity to do while watching his game. When you are at the game, you actually feel like you are doing something, accomplishing something that will enrich you or a friendship, or perhaps you are just sharing in a cultural event. But when you watch on television or listen to the radio, it is different. I usually think I am wasting time that would be better spent doing something practical. Your father understood his addiction or transgression and tried to alleviate some of the guilt, by accomplishing a mundane and needed chore. I find that shining his shoes was masculine enough and his concentration became more intense in the rote action. Win or lose, the hours were not wasted because his shoes were shined. They would be ready for work the next day. Sports are an escape we fully indulge our senses in, but the real world of the trash, dinner, family comes crashing back when the game is over.

I do the same thing when I watch the games. I read or fold clothes, do laundry or make dinner; not because of guilt of family but because we will not feel our time was wasted if our team lets us down and loses. Something is done. I am ready for tomorrow. Even in our escapes, men are drawn back to duty. The shining shoes was awesome.

Thanks for the lunch.

[Patrick Edmonds]

I am happy that my humble humor could inspire something so touching, or at least cause it to be recollected.

The feeling of distance in this piece is so palpable. The young boy, although physically close to his mom many days, and his father on this occasion, is still so distant emotionally from the two. The idea of being foreign to someone, someone who you have grown up with, been raised by, or are in love with has always allured me in good literature. We, as social beings, are always trying to close the gaps between each other, but often to no avail. I feel it is even harder today as our superficial barriers grow thicker and thicker.

We have rare opportunities of transparency into each others' souls, even the people we are closest to, but too often we are distracted by something else to realize when these blinds are being opened for us to peer in. Ironically, I love that the young boy's connection to his parents came when they were intoxicated in their own distractions, the crossword puzzle and game and shoe shining respectively, seemingly paying no mind to his presence.

My mother is fond of saying that true intelligence is the human connection. If true, then the young narrator is truly an intelligent young man.

Thanks for the lunch!