Abnormal views of normal events
Welcome to Davis and Main.
It is Wednesday morning, Dec. 19. As I write this it is snowing, raining, and sleeting at the same time. Shoppers are trudging along with heads down ... hark! Did a truck backfire or was that a cannon shot? Must be a truck. There are some old cannons around here, but I don't think they work.
My mission here at Davis and Main is to look at normal things in an abnormal way.
Here's an example: Why are most of the Christmas carols written about the night?
Folks have been telling me there is no spirituality in Christmas anymore. It's all about shopping and becoming stressed and a crescendo of disappointment because the lead-off present was yet another pair of argyle socks.
I don't believe that.
The spirit is right where it should be -- on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. A father feels the welling of pride and warmth because his family is around him, safe and healthy. Church on Christmas Eve is cleansing. The glow of a child's eyes on Christmas morning is eternal.
Unfortunately our society is a little cockeyed. We keep score on the Christmas season like it is a football game. We're late in the fourth quarter right now and consumer spending has yet to cover the spread.
It's goofy to pin economic hopes to the holiest day on the Christian calendar. Maybe, in the future, we should appoint a committee to look into that.
Something else that is goofy is the baseball steroid scandal. For more than a decade, apparently, the lords of the game have turned a blind eye to steroid abuse. They want us to believe they didn't know what was going on.
Horse rabbits.
Every game was a home run derby, and the fans were loving it. Those fans bought tickets to see Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa belt one into the next zip code. Truckloads of money are delivered to the lords when the fans buy tickets.
It's already being called the Steroid Era. August men are hard at work trying to figure out how to qualify the records set during the era. Put an asterisk after every herculean effort?
I have a question:
The pitcher has been juicing for years. He is facing the biggest, baddest steroid pumper with a bat. There's the wind up ... swing ... that one is out of here!
Home run.
Here's the question: If both pitcher and batter are on steroids do they cancel out each other so it's like they were normal?
All of the names and most of the dirty laundry is contained in The Mitchell Report. The day after the report was released the New York Yankees signed Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year contract worth $275 million. It is the most lucrative contract in the history of the game.
That's all you need to know about Major League Baseball.
And that's the normal behavior of our species.
No matter the law, treaty, canon, or rule, somebody is going to try to find a way to sneak around it. You're driving on the interstate and a car zooms past at what seems to be 100 miles per hour. The driver slows to about 60 when he passes one of the median crossovers where police like to lay in ambush.
It has stopped sleeting and snowing. The rain will give up soon. The shoppers have picked up their heads. Lunch time approaches. So goes the pulse of Davis and Main.
Merry Christmas, y'all.