Alaskan Bulgarian

2-2 or Why Do I Still Care So Much?

Today I taught 3 classes for four hours beginning at 8. Not a hard day, the kids working diligently on the pages in their workbooks I had assigned them. Then I rushed home after taking caer of all the daily documentation in the teachers' room. I made it home at 12:15, well before the start of World Sport on CNN International. I had the TV tuned to CNN from the night before, so when I heard for the umpteenth time the horrid and depressing news that a contractor had been beheaded in Iraq, I flipped to another channel. I care about it, and I long to hear the news that the five hoods who did it have been caught and/or done away with. I just son't need to hear Ralitsa Vassileva tell me the same play-by-play about the gruesome footage every half hour.

For some reason, the cable was out on most of the channels. The satellite at the cable company had apparently failed to pick up most of its usual signal. CNN and a few others were the only ones left, the rest was static. I went back to CNN and a few seconds later, it too turned to static. I lay my head back on the couch pillow, closed my eyes, and waited for the static to go away. Five minutes later, the picture came back and they were on the stock market report.

I knew I couldn't count on the cable company to hold things steady through World Sport, so I watched the news ticker, which had just turned to sports. It scanned through all the international sports news that, with the coming of the NBA playoffs I've grown to hate (That fat Argentenian coke addict soccer player is doing better. YAY!), and finally reached the basketball scores. CNN has a weird way of showing scores. In my experience, the winning team usually comes up on the ticker first, but it seems completely random on CNN. I saw "San Antonio 90" come off the right side of the screen and I didn't panic, but didn't leap off the couch either. 90 points is a lot for San Antonio. Then I saw "LA Lakers 98" and I gave a little fist pump. They'd done it. My precious, precious Lakers had won game 4 and tied the series.

Honest to God, I imagined the game going down exactly as I later read it had happened. Kobe Bryant gets back from Colorado on time, everybody thinks he looks exhausted. Just drained. He has an OK start, lets Shaq do some work in the third, then takes over in the fourth quarter. Everybody cheers and talks about his poise under pressure, the amazing way he carries himself when his world seems to be falling apart around him. Karl Malone calls him the greatest thing since Michael Jordan fighting a cold. And the Lakers, playing on the other side of the world, devoid of any knowledge of the existence of some guy living in Bulgaria who adores them, have taken one more step toward a championship.

The cable cut out again before World Sport arrived and twenty minutes later, when the whole cable system was restored, the show was stuck on a live press conference where two people involved with the olympics in Athens assured us that despite all the pessism and hatin' they been feelin' lately, the games will arrive on time. My favorite quotes lately have come from the head of the committee in Athens who has been telling Euronews that even though the world is betting against Greece, they've won this "latest bet" (about getting the roof of the stadium in place) and will win the bet of the games coming on time. Greece reminds me of someone demanding that his friend lay down money on his surviving a fall from a three-story building. "Dude. I will so live through this! Will you give me twenty bucks if I do?" Nobody really wants Greece to fail, we just all want them to get the damn thing done on time so we have pretty pictures to look at in August. Like that pool in Barcelona. Now that was a venue. This isn't about overcoming odds, it's about coming through. I'm not sure if Athens understands the difference. [/massive digression]

So I came to the internet club with no image of the game but what existed in my head. Good enough really. I have no idea why being a fan is still such a priority here in Bulgaria. I mean, if I look at each individual player on the Lakers, there isn't a whole lot to like there. But the image of the Lakers. Of Kobe soaring and Shaq smashing and--going back to a time I never really knew--Magic running and Kareem hooking. That's what I love and what I remember here in Bulgaria.

Tonight I'll watch World Sport and see 30 seconds of footage of the game narrated by a British chap who will sound like he hates this sport and would much rather be covering the cricket scandal in Zimbabwe. And I'll be content, even if 15 of those 30 seconds are occupied by seeing Kobe's back pleading not guilty in a Colorado courtroom. Peace Corps is the toughest job I'll ever love, after all, and I have to be content with what I get...

Posted by Rob at May 12, 2004 07:31 PM