It's 3:30 in the morning. I'm on baby-patrol. And I just finished Googling the world-record for longest continuous crying spell. I wanted to see if we have a shot. (Surprisingly, we don't. Not yet.) Anyway, seeing as how Starbucks doesn't open for another two hours...I've got two hours to kill. Helllllo, rambling-and-incoherent article. Therefore, unless you're outrageously bored or a speed-reader, I'm just going to go ahead and suggest that you back on out of here. Really, it's for the best. No hard feelings. No need for us all to suffer.
You've been warned. Enjoy.
_______________________________________________________________________
Last week, I got a call from an old friend—a non-Flipside-reading friend, mind you—a friend that I haven't seen in years. He explained how he was applying for a new job, and asked whether he could list me as a "character reference." I, of course, agreed.
A few days later, I got a call from the "potential employer," who ran through a lengthy series of questions regarding my friend's character. I unloaded the superlatives, stopping just short of having her believe that we were once a couple of "curious" cowboys working the same Wyoming ranch. She wrapped it up by saying that I had "been a great help" and that she was "now confident in his abilities" and that "oh yeah...seeing as how you know [the applicant] as you do, would you be willing to sit through an 'example presentation' to give
us feedback on whether you think he'd would be suitable for this line of work?"
Ummm…okay.
(By this point, more than a few readers can see where this is going. Sadly, I had no idea.)
The "example presentation" was set for last Wednesday night, at 7:00, over at 75th and Shadeland. And so I went. Understand, by the time I arrived, I wasn't exactly in my "happy place." Far from it. I was operating on 53 minutes of sleep thanks to Sir Colic-A-Lot; I had endured a 12-hour grind-fest at work; I hadn't eaten; I was taking small-arms fire from the wife for evading my baby-sitting duties; and, to top it off, I had just fought through three heavyweight traffic bouts with three highly ranked contenders (82nd Street, Allionville Road, and Binford Boulevard). In short, I was in no mood to be jerked around; I just wanted to help my friend and be on my way.
Yeah, well...just like how the average Flipside reader wants a relevant point somewhere before the 15,000-word mark, you don't always get what you want. Or so I learned.
I walked into the "potential employer's" offices, and they—well, you know what? F--- it.
The kid gloves are off…these jerk-asses don't deserve any journalistic protection. It was
a shameful place called "Primerica." At 6602 E. 75th Street. Avoid it at all costs. Anyway,
I walked into "Primerica" and instantly knew that something was amiss. Why? Well, for starters, the whole scene felt much more like a "United Skates of Primerica" (sans disco balls, puddles of urine on the floor, and the unmistakable sounds of gun play). There were 60 or so somewhat—how do I put this?—unkempt-looking folk, all wearing the dreaded "HELLO, My name is..." tags and talking and smiling and doing a lot of fake schmoozing.
Uh-oh.
As I turned to run—now realizing that I was staring down the business end of a two-hour time-share seminar…or worse—I turned directly into what had to be the Alpha Huckster in Charge. Whatever he was about to say, I knew it wouldn't be good. And it wasn't.
"It's networking, baby," he calmly said as he blocked my path, apparently experienced in the ways of quashing people's horror-filled escape attempts. "If you want to be indepently wealthy, you came to the right place." (I swear that I'm not making this up.
)
"Sounds-great-I-have-to-go-now-baby-at-home-thanks-for-having-me," I nervously replied,
in 0.072 seconds flat. I instantly went all Patrick Ewing and started projectile sweating.
"Hey…come on in, sit down and relax, hear what we have to say…we're just getting ready to start," he pleaded. And then he said—and I'm not making this up…in the name of Jesus Christ Our Lord, I'm not making this up—he said, "Sit near the back, and if you have to boogie, you have to boogie…it's all good."
Wrong, Mr. Hutz. Wrong!!! Not "all good." All bad. All very, very bad.
Long story kind-of-but-not-really short, I quickly found my friend, explained my suddenly urgent need to get home, and fled with the determination only found in a man escaping a networking seminar. There might have been poisonous darts whizzing past my head and a giant rolling boulder behind me, but I'm not sure. I never looked back. Couldn't risk it.
Honestly, I felt terrible. I felt as if I had abandoned my friend. As if I was unwilling to go to bat for him. See, all day, I had these Seinfeldian images of Baboo telling me what a "great man" I was. But then, during the 95-mph police-chase-like drive back home, I was hearing Baboo telling me what a "very bad man" I had become. How did it possibly come to this?
After hours of deliberation and self-hatred and drinking, I realized the cold, hard truth: I realized that I was never really a "character reference"…I was a potential networking client.
I realized that I was a patsy from the get-go. Or my friend was. One or the other. I realized that during that initial call, I could have lied and rambled on for hours about my buddy's multiple rape-convictions and his hilarious peyote-habit and his utter disdain for those state-mandated lithium injections. And you know what? There's a 99% chance that the
lady would have still said said that I had been a "great help" and that she was "now confident in his abilities" and "oh yeah…by the way, would you be willing to sit through an 'example presentation' to give us feedback on blah blah blah?"
The terrible and brilliant deceptiveness of the scam was becoming apparent. Primerica preyed upon my willingness—my obligation, really—to help a friend in need, and they turned that into a money-making opportunity for themselves.
I had been duped. Big time. And I was infuriated.
And here's the point that could have—and should have—been made 38,407 words ago:
this confluence of feelings—duped and infuriated—these aren't foreign emotions to me right now. Nor should they be unfamiliar to you. Not after the last few weeks. Because "duped-and-infuriated" is your average Indy-area sports fan right about now. (Well...there's also "depressed." And "perpetually drunk." But those didn't really fit into the Primerica story.
And because I've already wasted vast amounts of your time, we'll come back to those some other day. My apologies. For everything.)
With the Pacers, we were duped into believing that this year would be different...you know, less Pacers-ish. Then, to nobody's surprise, the Pacers started doing all their cute little Pacers things again: Bender used up his 18 minutes of yearly game time in one half;
Ron-Ron skipped his meds; Tinsley hit the 175-day IR with an owwie tummy; Foster underwent his annual hip-surgery; Jackson morphed into "Sik Wit It"; Carlisle again got written up in the "New England Journal of Medicine" for being the only human alive who has no remaining stomach-lining; and, ultimately, we were left hoping-against-hope that Croshere and Johnson and Jones would each put up a quintuple-double so that we could beat the Hawks. We were duped alright; nothing changed.
With the Hoosiers, we were duped into believing that Mike Davis had finally "gotten it," that he had graduated from checkers to advanced-beginner checkers. We were told by the IU administration, by the Indy Star, by the one-legged hobo wheeling around the Circle, and by Davis himself that "this team was going to make some noise this year." And if we weren't duped at the beginning of the season, we were after the Duke game; we were duped into thinking that Marco Killingsworth was Moses Malone, Karl Malone, and Jesus all rolled into one. And we thought that maybe—just maybe—the sheer dominance of this kid/Savior could negate Mike Davis' ineptness. Shame on us. Someone should have sat us down and force-fed us another viewing of Lucas. Maybe then we would've seen this disaster coming; maybe then we would've learned that things don't always turn out the way we want them to. As if you didn't know, near the end of the movie, the 4'9" 67-pound Corey Haim subs into the varsity football game in an effort to impress Winona Ryder. The audience hopes that maybe—just maybe—his tenacity and determination will overcome the fact that he has the body of an anorexic third-grade girl. C'mon, Lucas...you can do it!!! No. No he can't. He ends up in the ICU after 12 seconds of game time. He almost dies. El Fin. Roll credits. And that's when reality sets in, hindsight-style. Seriously, what did we possibly think would happen? He's 67 f---ing pounds...there's no other feasible way it could have ended. Well, Davis is our own little Lucas. Could IU's season have possibly unfolded in any other way? He's Mike f---ing Davis. And for whatever reasons, we were duped into overlooking that.
And finally, with the Colts, we were duped into believing that a strong regular season automatically equates to a strong post-season. Again. Remember, at 13-and-0, we all bought into the possibility that this Colts team was the reincarnation of the '85 Bears...we couldn't get enough of that particular Kool-Aid. In fact, there are some among us—well, some among the Indy Star Message Boards, at least—who remain duped, who still feel as if "the Colts had a pretty great season" and "one game don't change that." Really? That's like saying that a marriage that ended because you caught your piping-hot wife doling out tea-bags in the bed you once shared was nevertheless "a pretty great relationship" and "one adulterous gang-bang don't change that." Hey, Federline...it does change that. It changes everything. The whole situation is marred as a result. If ESPN Classic were showing the Colts/Rams game from earlier this year, would you watch it? No way. Because reliving the good times doesn't eradicate the bad. In fact, that tends to make things worse. Much worse. Seriously—knowing what we know now—who could ever care that much about a meaningless regular-season game? Who? Us. We cared. At least, we used to. We were uber-duped into believing that September and October and November actually meant something. Well...never again.
Three teams. Three ruined seasons. One recurring agonizing thought: How did it possibly come to this?
And on that note, I have to boogie. Starbucks just opened. |
