Saturday, February 4, 2006

I know that's kind of a silly thing to be dreaming over a year and a half after the fact, but sometimes, living in New York, where I now somehow find myself rooting for the Giants, Rangers and Mets (though two out of three don't really conflict with my primary teams as they're in different divisions and ehhh, I never really had a big thing going for the Bruins anyway), I feel like I've lost touch with my inner Red Sox Fan. Or something.

Anyway, in this dream, I totally had. I was watching the game, groaning as Matsui hit his home run and the Red Sox totally fell apart. I was at Penn for Game 3. It was homecoming. I watched half the game at Cavanaugh's, and after it had gotten pretty useless, met up with people at Smoke's and tried to ignore the tv, even though I could still see the score. In my dream, I was at Smoke's again, watching through my hands as they covered my face. It was frustrating, once again, to see my team choke and be outplayed, especially on their own field.

But then, I had a moment of revelation. It was like watching Miracle and somehow having forgotten that the U.S. gets the gold afteral. Or like not knowing Marty McFly makes it back to the future. And you've forgotten it's a movie at all, and that the good guys are supposed to win. (I know for some of my readers the "good guys" here is not such a cut-and-dry thing. But to that I say: "Shush.") You're just caught up in how unsurmountable the odds seem at the moment and can only focus on the way that the overwhelmingly bad turn of events seems to be picking up momentum.

In my dream, I turned to someone next to me (I don't remember who -- this was a dream, not an exact reenactment of my actual experiences watching the game in 2004) and said, "I've seen this one -- I just remembered how it ends! You wouldn't believe it, but they go on to win! Not this game, but the next one -- the next four, even. Then they win the World Series."

And then my dream started to get even more cinematic (there may even have been a voice-over), but I was suddenly amazed at how even when something can look that bad, it can get turned around so fast to be the best thing ever* in just a few weeks.

*(And shut up, I don't mean that the Red Sox winning the World Series was the literal best thing ever. But it is, arguably, the best thing ever in their history as a team. And this is a METAPHOR, ok?)

[10:20 AM EST] [reply?]