Yesterday I worked myself through five sports sections of the London Free Press – Tuesday to Saturday.  I had finally caught up enough in my PVR viewing of the World Cup to do the deed.  (I still can’t look at the Monday, Tuesday and now Wednesday editions since I haven’t seen the championship game.)  What strangeness to pick up the paper from the mailbox, fold it in half and then religiously avoid looking at any print as I walk up the driveway. Inside the house, I stuff it under some other papers to make sure I don’t see any headlines.  And then all the personal support workers in our home need to be coached about never leaving the sports section exposed on the dining room table.  Such a lot of work!

My conclusion has been that it’s better for me to not know who won a certain game.  The surprise moments need to be experienced.  It’s not good enough for me to enjoy the flow of the game, armed with knowledge of the result.  But maybe I’m wrong.  What does it do to me to walk around with a “this, but not that” stance in life?  Well, for one thing, I know it can create some horribly tense moments.  One of out PSWs walked in a few days ago with a big smile on her face.  “The only thing I’m going to tell you is that Brazil plays Argentina today.”  Reaction inside the bod: “No!”  Outside: “Oh.”  Just that dissonance is enough to rip a guy apart.

So I immediately launched into a series of calculations that led me to an inescapable conclusion – both Brazil and Argentina lost their Semi-Final games and would have met in the third place game this last Saturday.  Grrr.  Dear PSW, how could you ruin my day like that?  Eventually, I watched the Argentina-Netherlands Semi-Final, and guess what – Argentina won at the very last moment with their final penalty kick.  All this angst about someone blabbing a soccer result … and she was just kidding!

“How do [I] do what [I] do to me?  If I only knew.”  So goes the song, sort of.  Then there’s my forays out into the community, committed to not knowing.  Yesterday was the dentist again, and the first thing I said to the sole occupant of the waiting room was “Please don’t tell me who won the World Cup.”  He smiled and said “I won’t.”  And this was 48 hours after the game had been played.  In the examination room, my first move was to ask for the remote.  No news station for me, with its twelve discreet bits of information staring at me every second … I retreated to a cartoon channel, where happily the characters didn’t mention soccer at all.

Last night, as the freezing started coming out, I was pretty groggy.  Of course, three fillings and a cleaning had their effect, as did the bike ride I went on in the morning,  but a basic choice I’ve been making was in the mix too.  All that psychic energy expended, all that contraction, all that strategizing … no thanks.