Happy Freakin’ February 14th

Wow, so I had this nerdy joke all lined up for weeks about how the most important thing about this Feb 14^th was that they were going to start filming The Hobbit.  But then Peter Jackson had to go and get sick so they pushed it back to March, so there goes my punchline.  So instead, I searched for geeky Valentine’s Day jokes, and sadly, this was the best I came up with:

An electron is out a courting an atom and keeps flying around the atom to get its attention. Exasperated from all the attention, the atom asks, "Why do you persist in running these circles around me?" The electron replies, "I'm strangely attracted to you."

And then there was this:

Roses reflect a light frequency at one end of the visible electromagnetic spectrum,
Violets reflect a light frequency at the other end of the visible electromagnetic spectrum,
Sugar is C12H22O11,
And you release the endorphins in my brain.

But seriously.   I know it seems like every year at Valentine ’s Day I do a little rant about singleness and how much Valentine’s Day sucks.  Usually this is the point where I make some kind of speech about how I LOVE my singleness and I’m doing great and I’m content with where God has me.  While all that is true about 70% of the time, I must confess there is another side to all that, even though I don’t usually like talking about it.

Now, I’m a sap, but I’m also kind of a cynic at times, so I’m well aware that coupledom and & marriage do not equal a lifetime of bliss and a shiny, conflict-free future.  So hear me when I say that I do not think being in a relationship would fix my problems or make everything better.  It’s not that.  It’s just that…well, I’m a sap.  Always have been.  I’ve been dreaming of love since I was a wee thing—even when I thought boys were gross, I still sort of expected to find one I’d like someday.

I already have a hard enough time with my sentimental, mushy tendencies the other eleven months of the year.  Forgive me for sounding just a tiny bit whiny here, but then Valentine’s Day comes along and amplifies the whole damn thing.  I hate coming across bitter or desperate.  I’m really not.

It’s just…I have this idea in my head, you know?  That someday there will be a guy who will…see me.  And not just glance at my externals, measuring me against the current ingrained ideas of beauty and perfection.  Really see me.  Take a second look and find the beauty the goes below skin depth.  And he’ll take a moment to get to know me a little better.  Find out what common interests we have, what deep beliefs and convictions we share.  We’d become friends, laugh over things, share meals and drinks and our lives.  And if it were a story I was writing, the key part would be the moment when he’d take the step of going beyond friendship, of pursuing something more with me.  And not halfheartedly, but with a passion that would make all this waiting I’m currently doing worth it.

Some days I have a really hard time believing in such a scenario.  I see it unfolding in other people’s lives, but for me it seems so remote.  Other days I have to believe it, or I’d probably despair.  And whatever happens, I don’t want to turn into a bitter spinster.  I know God has a plan for me and has kept me on this path for a reason (though I have no idea what it is).

So this Valentine’s Day, though I may roll my eyes at the garishness & commercialization of it all, I will not let cynicism have the final word.  This year, I will choose to keep my hopes up and to believe love is real and romance is out there…I just haven’t found it yet.

And so for you, whoever you are, wherever you are, despite whatever is taking you so long, this song is for you.

To everyone else:

If you’re with someone you love, forget all that mushy frilly crap and focus on the reality that you’ve found someone worth sharing your life with.  That alone should make V day worth celebrating even in the simplest, smallest ways.

If like me, you’re single, let's band together against despair.  We’ll have our day.  Until then, this one’s for us—not geeky, not all “single power,” but sort of an honest prayer sung by gleeks:

And Happy Freakin’ February 14^th!

Football, Fanatics, and Family

I’m going to tell you a story.  Actually, I’m going to tell a couple of stories.  My narrative tone may have been influenced somewhat by my recent addiction to the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” (HIMYM), which is basically about a guy telling his kids a bunch of stories about him and his friends living in New York while he searched for true love.

So in that vein, let me tell you a bunch of stories about me and my friends, family, and...football.

Before I was born, my dad was into football.  Not just into it—he played in high school and college.  He even won awards—he was really good!  But his love of football never really transferred to the rest of our little unit.  I was never coordinated enough to care much about sports; I got hit in the head one too many times in gym class and I guess it knocked out a good chunk of my competitiveness as well.  Growing up, fall and winter weekends were full of yelling in my house—my dad, hollering at the TV with such volume and enthusiasm that the rest of us were forced to take refuge away from the living room.  I didn’t get it.  Not only did I fail to comprehend the game itself, I didn’t see the appeal of cheering for a bunch of guys in tights that I didn’t even know.

Flash forward to college.  I went to a small Presbyterian liberal arts school in Missouri.  We didn’t have a football team; we had a basketball team.  I didn’t really get into that, either.  I was into doing drama for BSU and leading worship at InterVaristy and having long philosophical discussions with my friends.  And in my sophomore year, my family moved from Washington state to Western Pennsylvania.  To Pittsburgh, in fact.  And so I would go “home” to a city I was totally unfamiliar with.

One summer instead of working on campus, I went “home.”  I ended up doing an internship of sorts at the same water authority office in which my mom worked.  And that was when I discovered something strange and unique about Pittsburgh: their love of sports.  All my life, I’d considered football a “guy’s game,” something that gave men an excuse to yell and drink and be physical.  Sure, there was the occasional woman who got into it, but she was the exception.  NOT SO in Pittsburgh, my friend.  As I worked in that office, I overheard grown women sitting around in their jerseys talking about the game.  I was astonished; surely they didn’t mean the football game?  But they did.  I came to learn that these women weren’t an anomaly, either.  Pittsburgh has an overwhelming fixation on their teams—mostly the Steelers, though the Penguins get a lot of love, too, and the Pirates…well, they suck, but it’s still fun to catch a game at PNC park. 

Even the mildest of people can occasionally get caught up in the excitement when their town's team is in a big game, like against a rival, at the playoffs or the Super Bowl.  And everyone kinds roots for their hometown team in such cases.  You know, bit of hometown pride. Pittsburgh, however, tunes in devotedly anytime the Steelers are playing.  Win or lose, they're cheering them on, waving their terrible towels.  Game days find everyone from businessmen to kindergarten teachers wearing black and gold and/or jerseys.  Often at work.  I am not making this up.

And so a strange thing happened: I found myself, for the first time ever, watching the Super Bowl, and actually caring about the outcome.  Actually rooting for a team—unheard of!  I may have said that I rooted for the Redskins because it was the team from the state I was born in, but I never bothered to watch them play a whole game.  Slowly, over the next few years, I became swept up in Steelermania.  Not quite enough to buy my own jersey (though I did consider #43, Polamalu!), and I still had a hard time watching the entire game, but it was by far more invested than I’d ever been.  Pittsburgh’s love of their team—their pride in the Steelers, win or lose—was infectious.  

So, it’s weird for me to tell you this story of how I started watching football, and why I am a Steelers fan.  Weird because I watched the playoffs tonight—all four quarters, AND I yelled at the TV!  Weird because I no longer live in Pittsburgh.  But when you’ve moved around as much as I have, sometimes you hold onto weird things.  Sometimes they’re tangible mementos, sometimes it’s a favorite brand of something, or a certain pronunciation of a word.  Sometimes it’s a football team.  It gives me a strange sense of continuity in a life that is otherwise often fractured.  But it’s also weird because sometimes I get a glimpse of my own transformation from the other side.

For example, once I met an author at a conference.  I’d read some of her stuff, and I was a little in awe of her, so I started rambling.  This was right after the Steelers won the Super Bowl in 2006, and the town was still riding the high.  You need to understand that seriously, Pittsburgh is not like other towns.  I’ve lived a lot of places, but I've never lived anywhere that gets as wholly, almost unanimously invested in a team.  Seriously.  And I had been sucked in.  So I asked her what she thought, haha, of all the hullabaloo still going on.  She looked at me blankly, like she hadn’t noticed.  I tried to explain that it was a big deal to the people of Pittsburgh, where the conference was hosted, and she still had a kind of glazed over look like she’d never considered actually caring about the outcome of a football game…and I realized I’d suddenly become one of them.  I used to be really embarrassed by that story, but now it doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

The 2006 Super Bowl brought about an unfortunate, unforeseen side effect: family drama.  They played against the Seattle Seahawks, and in case you forgot, we used to live in Washington, and still had family in the Seattle area.  (And in fact, we are back again!)  What started as good-natured ribbing ended up becoming harsh on both sides, causing some temporary rifts that have thankfully healed since.  But I still have very good friends and family members who hate my favorite team.  In such cases, it’s easy to get swept up in the moment and forget the bigger picture.  Family & friendships are much more important than who wins a game of football! 

Fanaticism about anything can bring you closer to some people and divide you from others if you’re not careful.  Does that mean it’s bad to be a fanatic?  I don’t think so.  I’m a fan of a lot of things, and a twenty minute conversation with me will probably start to reveal them.  You could even say I geek out about stuff.  But the point of geeking out and becoming a devoted fanatic shouldn’t be merely to prove our own dedication and thereby exclude ourselves from the uninformed, unenlightened masses.  It should be to invite them to share our passions.  That’s what got me into football in the first place—I felt the city of Pittsburgh inviting me to share their joy and fervor over a good game.  If I hadn’t lived there so long (longer than anywhere else in my life) and experienced it for myself, I’d probably hate the Steelers, too.  I usually root for the underdog, and with six Super Bowl wins, the underdog they ain’t.  But instead, I’m a fan.  A black-and-gold-wearing maniac.

The funny thing is, there are tons of other things I’m more fanatic and geeky about than the Steelers.  Ireland, superheroes, Star Wars, philosophy, good stories, God, writing, Switchfoot, and Narnia, just to name a few, in no particular order.  In a way, it’s kind of fun to branch out and defy a few stereotypes.  Football, science fiction, and chick flicks.  Yep, I’m that kind of girl.  

I guess the moral of the story is: if I annoy you with my tweets or facebook status updates about the Steelers…especially when the Super Bowl is on…I’m sorry.  I’m apologizing in advance.  Just know at the end of the day, no matter how fanatic I sound, I am sane, and I care more about you than I do about the Steelers.  Now let's go forth and invite people to share in our fanaticisms, instead of driving them away.

Oh, and…go Steelers!!!  (I couldn’t resist!)

Holding out for a...

Well, Dear Readers, it's time you knew the truth about me. So I'm going to come clean.

I

am

a Geek.

It's true. According to the McGill definition, geekiness is generally described not by level of intellect or how much studying you do. Instead it is defined by the level of your obsession and passion for something. Thus, geekiness extends to many areas of study (i.e., movie geek, sports geek, video game geek, underwater basket weaving geek, etc.). Characteristics include (but are not limited to): frantic shrieking and/or hyperventilating when the object of your geekdom is mentioned, ridiculously belabored conversations regarding the geek-worthiness of the particular subject, and large amounts of trivia, factoids, lines and lyrics being stored in your memory for handy dispensing on the uneducated, un-geekified masses. [Correction: the consise McGill definition of a geek is: "unhealthily obsessed." Also, please Nerds, do not take offense; I count myself among you, too.  {Nerdfighters, too.}]

Now, there are many areas I would admit to geekdom (and many you could probably guess without straining a single brain cell), but I'm here today to discuss one in particular: Superheroes. The truth is, I had no idea how geeky I was when it comes to comic book heroes. By no means am I nerdy enough to be an expert (geekiness doesn't require you to know things like the first ever appearance of Spider-Man was in what comic book released on what date, or who the original inker for the Fantastic Four was--though it often helps). When I went to see X:III with a group of people my age, I was surprised at how few others were outraged by some of the movie's blatant character redirection (don't even get me started, unless you want to see geek-fury). And certainly, if I may be slightly sexist for a moment, none of the girls seemed all that interested in the heated discussion that followed. Nope. Just me. Is it odd that I am into comic books? You would think not, in this day and age; but I still am a bit of a rarity. Truthfully, I'm about as geeky about superheroes as I can be without surrendering my second X chromosome. (And if you're curious as to why more girls don't read comic books, pick one up some time. You'll find less cleavage in a Victoria's Secret catalogue. Seriously. Don't ask me why—you already know the answer. I just wish they could understand how unrealistic that is...and how unappealing to a lot of females.)

I grew up being fascinated by heroes—any old swashbuckler would do in a pinch, but it was those masked men who really caught my interest. The intrigue of the double identity drew me in, as well as the daring rescues and commitment to helping those in need. I used to love to watch the old black and white Zorro show on Disney. And when I was a little older, I watched cartoons every Saturday morning—Batman, X-Men, and Spider-Man. I loved them. Now that I'm a lot older, I still find myself drawn to the caped crusaders. And not just in a hero-worship-fantasy kind of way. I recently read a fantastic book called "Superheroes and Philosophy" which discussed a lot of the philosophical, theological, and moral motivations behind what superheroes do.

In case you're wondering, yes, I do know that superheroes don't really exist. But it's fun to think about what it would be like if they did. (I've even written a story about it.)I've been watching the Sci-fi show "Who Wants to be a Superhero?" hosted by Stan Lee, since it premiered a few weeks ago. I know, I know, it's reality, and generally I really hate reality TV. But this one at least has challenges that are interesting to me. I still don't totally like...well, any of the contestants left, really. With good reason, I think. If nothing else, this show has proven to me that most people are not cut out for a superhero's life. Can you take a guess why?

Most people think about how cool it would be to have superpowers—like being able to fly, or turn invisible, or blow up something just by staring at it. The truth is, it wouldn't be cool at all. (Okay, maybe a tiny bit.) But most of the time it would freak other people out, so you'd have to keep it to yourself. And then you'd have to decide: are you going to use your powers for others, or for you? That's the difference between a Superhero and a Supervillain. And if you stop to think about it, what's the fun, really, in always being at the beck and call of a helpless humanity? That's why the Spider-Man comics coined the famous phrase "With great power comes great responsibility." And all heroes seem to struggle with the weight of that responsibility—even though they want to do what is right. It's not easy to put everyone else first.

And that, I believe, is at the core of why I love superheroes so much. Not because of how cool they are. But because they represent a struggle that is central to another group of people—ones that actually do walk the earth among us: Christians. We, as followers of Christ, also wrestle with our responsibilities. And have been from the beginning. (Look it up.) We may want to do what is right, but so often our desire to help others, to reach out to the lost, gets swallowed up.

Superheroes aren’t just great role models for humanity; they’re great role models for Christians. (Okay, not all of them. The ones that top my list? Flawed as they are—Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Rogue, Nightcrawler, and The Thing.) They show us what it’s like to serve others constantly, and to struggle between being others-centered or self-centered. There are lots of reasons to love superheroes: this is just one of my favorites.