Maybe It's NOT the Shoes!

01/14/08 06:33 AM | Spurts

On Friday I found some super-cool things. The Colts Championship Reebok shoes with horseshoes and logos, the AFC South Division Hat and the NFL Defensive Player of the year's #21 home jersey. I bought in, I bought them, I really like them. I wished in them a dream, and future and a couple of victories. Those dreams were more real than the ones that I lacked in sleep. They lasted a season, they marched for two and a half days. They ended in reality. They were just dreams after all.

What a rough day, and even rougher night. The sense of loss is as palpable as the loss. The dream ends. The hope of a repeat glances off the outstretched hands of Dallas Clark, and dies on a field that itself will never see another season. The roar of a crowd becomes an echoing whoosh, the deconstruction of the stadium will be like a murmur in comparison. I stay home with my thoughts. I half expect a call from my Pop but that call is never received, and I'm sure that in Old Town Florida he sat there half expecting a call from me. What is there to say. We both saw the thing, saw it in high definition no less. The passes tipped and intercepted, the primary receivers blanket covered the check-down guys shadowed as well, the running backs struggling for inches when yards are needed. That was clear. Still, like a Reggie Miller Knick-Killer last minute comeback we can't look away, can't believe, can't accept that the buzzer has sounded, that the game and the dream is over until the fall.
I did get a call from Florida, but it was from the miraculous Meredith my daughter. She was working while the dream expired, but she got to see the last three minutes in the Magnolia Theatre room, she saw the end of days for the RCA Dome in brilliant high-def five feet across, larger than life but still a tiny bubble when compared to the dream.

I didn't sleep well, Meredith called again and talked to Jenni, freshly returned from a Night of Kegling. I finished two chapters in the next Tech-Editing job. I went to bed and didn't sleep well at all. I woke more than I dozed, in the twilight from the XM radio I felt the crushing weight of disappointment, I couldn't move, I couldn't breath. I thought I might never be able to watch another game, that I had seen my last snap. Finally I got my arm from under the covers and shook her shoulder and said loudly for the moment, louder than the whispers of voices in her dreams, louder than the FM voices in her earphones, "Hey, Jenni! Roll over the other way you are crushing me!" A great weight was lifted, but still I couldn't sleep, the first alarm went off before the reset music from the XM ended, it times out every two hours and I had turned it back on twice more during Jenni's rest and my wrestle.
Yesterday the gloves came off and so did the Championship shoes. They will be added to the wall and a half of team paraphernalia and pride that still lives and breaths , they will add their whisper to the collective whispers of the totems. They will begin the chant "This Year" in August, and just maybe they will be heard.
Chuck Pace © 2008
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