My brother is a rabid Auburn University football fan and a big time booster. This year he has a box for the Auburn-Bama game.
For anybody unfamiliar with the Auburn-Bama game’s significance in Alabama, it’s THE sports event of the year. People reserve hotel rooms in whichever city it’s going to be in for years in advance, the RVs start arriving days before the game, a tent and RV city springs up for literally a couple of miles around the stadium, it is bigger than the Super Bowl.
So he offered me a “seat” or whatever you want to call it in his private box. I know people who would kill for this opportunity. My response was “I sincerely appreciate the offer, but… no thanks” because, frankly, I’d just as soon spend a few hours shoving toothpicks under my toenails and fingernails than watch a college football game. I couldn’t care less about the game, I couldn’t care less who wins or doesn’t, and I only have a very general notion of how the game is even played. (I know what a touchdown and there’s a point for kicking a field goal but there are other ways of scoring too, I understand, and I don’t have a clue what they are nor do I care to learn.)
I was thinking about this today: how often do people get offered what many would see as glorious opportunities and just couldn’t care less about them? I was thinking, "I’ll bet that this very week there’s somebody who’s second row center to see Book of Mormon or Hugh Jackman or some other sold out hard-to-get-tickets-to Broadway show that I would LOVE to see and who couldn’t care less about and would just as soon be home balancing his/her checkbook and watching '90s movies on Netflix streaming. I’ve known people who were irked that they “had” to go with their families to Disney or to Italy even.
Taking it further, when I was a kid I always thought I totally should have been English- I was a major Anglophile, loved English history (still do), loved English TV, hate Alabama summers/love cool damp weather, etc., and I would think “Somewhere in England there’s a kid my age thinking 'Man, I should have been American- preferably from someplace hot, because I hate the British climate…”.
If I could I’d gladly give “my” space in the box to somebody else, but obviously it’s not mine to give, plus I can’t think of a better way to lose a friendship than to make somebody spend a day with my brother and his friends and wife and kids. So what’s something you’ve had the opportunity to do that many would kill for but you couldn’t care less about and wish you could pass on to somebody else? It can be anything from a sporting event to sex-with-an-A-list-movie-stud/goddess or anywhere in between or beyond.