BW-3s, Indianapolis – During the middle of the fourth quarter of the Oklahoma-Texas college football game on Saturday, a woman inquires to the largely Oklahoma-rooting seating area after a Texas fumble with just under 6 minutes to go, “did we win yet?” Apparently unable to decypher the scoreboard and time clock that is superimposed on roughly 20% of the television screen during the entirety of every single fucking football game broadcast for the last 15 years, this woman relies upon those around her to fill her in on the basic mechanations of time and simple math. Shunning the urge to actually pay attention, or even glance at the time clock, she has now exposed herself as a complete boob, embarrassing herself and those around her. Did we win yet, indeed.
One question: does this woman consider herself a sports fan? If she does, then she’s an idiot who is being justly condemned for her ineptitude.
On the other hand, if she’s not a sports fan, she’s probably a lot like me: too unbelievably bored by the spectacle of professional sports to be bothered actually watching the screen, and the question is merely an expression of her fond hope that the Deep Hurting will be finally coming to an end so she can go on to something more entertaining and productive, like pounding carpet tacks under her fingernails.
Miller, I had considered that, but it wasn’t so much of a “can I now get back to my regularly scheduled life?” as it was an honest attempt to appear to be interested. Now, taking interest in something that doesn’t naturally appeal to you (usually for the sake of making nice with the spouse/SO/group of friends) is to be commended.
But let’s say my girlfriend is really into Professional Hummel Humping (PHH). Wanting to take an interest in her interests behooves me, as I genuinely want to spend time with her and share an interest. Let’s also say that PHH is an extremely complicated sport, but has an equally extremely dedicated fanbase - and PHH is broadcast worldwide (maybe on PAX or something). There’s a clock involved, and some type of objective scoring system.
I think it would take minimal effort on my part to notice a clock on the screen, notice that it’s counting down (or counting up in the case of soccerball - a simple inquiry reveals what the final time is), and notice if you want more or less points than the other team when time is up. If I want to aska question that shows I’m taking an interest, but am still a little unsure of the finer proceedings, I’m going to ask a question with a bit more meat to it that I know can be answered by looking at the screen for 3 seconds.
I’m posting this from the local library, as Mr. Rilch’s/my computer is still ailing. Now bear with me on this…
Take tower to store. We’re still under warranty. Woohoo! And one of these disks will restore the system, right? No; we don’t have THE disk. D’oh! Leave tower at store and head home to order replacement disk.
Replacement disk arrives FedEx. Sign for it, bring envelope inside. Open it, inspect the contents, call the store to let them know I’ll bring it in later that evening. Crossed to fridge to pour juice. By this time, less than five minutes have passed; more like three. Enter MIL.
“So is the computer fixed now?”
:smack:
Now, granted, she might not have noticed that the tower wasn’t in its usual spot. She’s not used to having a computer in the house, and she might be one of those people who think the monitor is the computer. But for Og’s sake, I would barely have had time to put a disk in the computer, much less start a system repair. And she wasn’t joking; she honestly thought all I had to do to fix the computer was put a disk in the drive. Boggles my mind, it does.
As for the OP: How many beers do you suppose she’d had by that time? I mean, it doesn’t even take looking at the clock; if the other fans are still watching the game, as opposed to whooping and hollering (or howling in despair), then clearly nobody has “won yet”.