And I Saved $150!

Sunday October 7th, 2007 - Lake Villa, IL

After a lifetime of making stupid mistakes I’m finally starting to have a little wisdom rear it’s beautiful head. I hope it’s not too late to salvage a good life but at least on this day it’s not nearly as bad as it could have been. How many times in my life have I sat all by myself with my head in my hands trying to figure out how to get myself out of a horrible spot?

Too many to count. But not today. Today I protected myself on several fronts and had a very productive day all around. It could have been a disaster. Instead I got a lot of work in on the movie script and on my business idea and I even sorted out all of my tax documents so I’m current and up to date earlier than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m downright giddy!

Today was the big Packer/Bear game and I had a chance to go see it live. I have a friend who had an extra ticket I could have bought for about $150 and I thought about it for just a minute and then politely said thanks but no thanks. Everyone was picking the Packers to stomp the Bears but I know how things work. That’s just the time the Bears would win so I would have spent $150 to get tortured in person. I could feel it and I wouldn‘t risk that.

I also have a friend named Shelley who lives in Illinois and is a huge Packer fan. She is a former student and has been inviting me over for dinner and a Packer game for a long time now. I’d love to go and I know it would be fun and I’m sure she’s probably a kitchen whiz of epic proportions but today was not the day. I told her I had the chance to maybe see the game live and she was cool about it as any Packer fan would be. But I just couldn’t do it.

Several years ago my friend Drew Olson and his wife Barb invited me over to watch the Packers playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers. They were supposed to win it easily but in the last few seconds Steve Young threw a pass to Terrell Owens of all people and it just took the wind out of our sails for dinner. We still talk about it years later and it wasn’t fun at all. Here Barb spent all day cooking what was a fantastic meal but none of us got to really enjoy it like we should have because we sat there and rehashed the game through it.

I didn’t want to do that to Shelley too. I love kids and she’s got some I’ve never met yet and I’d hate to meet them on such a bad note and not enjoy a great meal either. I told her I would love to come another time and I will meet the kids and everyone will have a blast. It just wouldn’t be tonight because I had a gnawing feeling they might lose and I was right.

Instead I didn’t even make it a point to watch the first half of the game. I was too deeply into what I was doing and time got away from me. I turned it on at halftime and saw all of the highlights and thought maybe I was wrong but still wasn’t sorry I saved myself $150. I watched the game leak down the sewer in the second half and I actually found it funny.

I guess I was actually able to step outside of the emotional part of it for once and watch it for what it was - a football game. Tonight the Packers didn’t deserve to win and that’s a plain simple fact. It had nothing to do with my childhood and bad memories and any of the other stuff I seem to attach to watching the Packers lose. But I still think the Bears SUCK.