Take my recent story for example.
The BC Lions - a football team apart of the Canadian Football League, or CFL - are holding their training camp in the sports field park and stadium complex about 2 minutes walk from where I'm living. I bike by their training sessions almost everyday on my way to work, friends, or even church, and yet I'm not particularly excited or even moved by the fact that they are here. In fact, I'm more worried about being smacked in the head with a football, falling off my bike, and embarrassing myself at work when I explain what happened. Besides training in my back yard, the Lions are staying at my College. They eat their meals in my school's Cafeteria and sleep in the college's residence buildings, (all two of them). However, I am never caught up in the fact that some, overly sized, ex-high-school jerk - I mean jock - I mean incredibly gifted athlete who happens to run around, catch things, and hit people for a living - is right now sleeping in the same bed I slept in little over a month ago. No, I have not cared really that the BC Lions are here.
That is, until this evening.
Me and Dan had just finished watching Adam Sandler's beautiful movie, Reign Over Me, (watch it,) and happened to stumble across the news. After a story on how the Pittsburgh Penguins are dragging on the Hockey Season for far too long, the anchor said, "And now we go to Abbotsford where the BC Lions are training in Greg and Dan's backyard." Well, didn't really say that, but the mention of Abbotsford caught our attention. What followed was some story about two professional ball catchers who were duke-ing it out over some position on the team. I think that was what the story was about anyways, Dan and I weren't paying attention. What we were paying attention to was the footage of the football field we can see from our house, the school we spend most of our time 8 months of the year, and our favorite lunch lady, all of which on national television. This is when I - possibly we - got excited.
But why?
I guess it was because we were seeing our neighborhood get some recognition. We were famous!
But that doesn't make any sense. In fact, not only did I jump from our school and neighborhood to us - which is completely unrealistic - I don't think anyone would have cared. What do I mean? Well, my friends or family who might have seen that story - which I doubt because it was on at 11:30 at night, pacific standard time - wouldn't be able to associate me with any of that footage. Anyone else watching it would be thinking about the BC Lions and the story surrounding these two players, not the field they were playing on.
10 seconds of fame got to my head, and it wasn't even a real 10 seconds of fame. I fell into the trap every person in the background of Much On Demand fell into. It's not even real fame. No one watching the knows you or even cares that your there. Yet, why do we fall into this trap again and again? Why is fame so appealing to us?
I do have to admit though; it was cool seeing my favorite lunch lady on national TV.
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1 comment:
Sometimes, CTV news does broadcasts from this hill that overlooks the house in which I grew up, and it always excites me. I wonder why. It's not like you can find the house without looking extremely hard for it.
You should streak during practice and see if THAT makes it on the news.
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