The Amazing Chicken

For everyone who never attended middle school, or attended middle school but was too confused by ... a lot of things ... to actually learn, let me give you a near crash course on something I was taught in either sixth, seventh or eighth grade. Or, really, anytime before 2006. All those years seem to blend together.

Somewhere along the way, in between various overtures to get into R-rated movies and around parental advisory stickers, I learned about something called the 'inciting incident' of a story. A quick visit to Answers.com (There's one thing you never forget, and that's how to cheat) reminds us that the inciting incident is, "the conflict that begins the action of the story and causes the protagonist to act," and that, "Without this event, there would be no story."

I said 'near crash course' because the inciting incident here was a near crash. I'll spare you the petty details (Unless you want to hear them. ... Anybody? No? Nobody? OK), but what matters is this: I was right. The camo-hatted doofus in the pickup was wrong. And yet, somehow, I found MYSELF staring down a middle finger! This guy flicked me off! You believe that?!

Had I not been on my way to pick up a very important order of Chinese food, I would have turned around and followed the guy until I chickened out and went home. Lucky for him, I had a date with the Sesame Inn's Amazing Chicken, and I never stand up Chinese food. Next time, pal. Just you wait.

Nonetheless, as I crunched my way through fortune cookie No. 2 and struggled with the Chinese pronunciation of 'breakfast,' I thought more about this asshole and how he ran a stop sign, nearly ran into me, decided that I was wrong and flipped me the bird all in about 7 seconds. In the same -- Oops, sorry -- In the same amount of time, I did the 'This guy's gonna stop ...' drive ... the 'This guy's really not stopping?' drive ... the 'Jesus!' slam on the breaks ... and the 'What the hell, dude?!' glare through the windshield, fully expecting to receive and acknowledge a friendly wave. Instead, I got a big, healthy, 'F**k you.'

I already told you how I handled the immediate aftermath, by ravaging a carton of Chinese takeout and turning to fortune cookies for inspiration and wisdom (The joyfulness of man prolongeth his days. Remember that). What I didn't tell you is that the situation played out far differently in the alternate universe that exists inside my brain, which has seen me throw a perfect game to win the World Series, score the winning goal of the Stanley Cup on a penalty shot, bang home a half-courter to win the NCAA title (followed by the MJ shrug) ... I could go on, but you get the idea. (Unless you ... Right, right, you get the idea.)

The near-accident re-enactment? Let's just say that instead of waiting for the guy to drive away and continuing on to prolong my lustful affair with the Amazing Chicken, I roll down my window and offer the fella some choice words. He retorts. I get out. He gets out, and we start to whale right there in the Northway Mall parking lot, something I'm fairly confident would be a first.

However, before I get to that point, where I'm pummeling the guy with blows, screaming 'WANT ME TO STOP, NOW?!' (Good line, right?) I stop and suddenly have doubts -- Well, I don't know how big that guy was ... -- in my own freakin' fantasy world, where I can dunk over 7-footers, let alone dribble a basketball. But I can't take on a dude wearing camouflage in the suburbs of Pittsburgh? Doesn't sound right, does it? Actually, that probably sounds absolutely right. Well, this is my blog. I say it doesn't. Why? I'LL TELL YOU WHY!

Like I said above, my life up until yesterday is a big grab bag of memories. Somewhere in there, though, jumbling around between chicken pox and getting yelled at during football practice, is a lot of reflective thought on what sports mean, and why people care so much about whether or not their favorite team wins. Certainly, many smarter but probably not as good looking people have devoted way more effort toward making sense of this topic, and they probably have come up with theories and explanations that read like Plato compared to the content that regularly appears on good old Jose's Mesa. But I took a philosophy class in college, and only one of the papers I handed in came back with a D on it. Might as well call me Patroclus.

Before I put on my philosopher's robes, start growing a long yet remarkably wispy goatee and begin using words like 'wherein,' allow me to briefly swing by the other end of respectability. Perhaps not coincidentally, this involves two college freshman whose names rhyme with Pat Mitsch and Steve Pede, who attended a Pitt basketball game in which a pesky Chris Quinn defied all of the forces of nature and gave the Krauser-era Panthers a real scare, more so than Krauser himself ever could. Pitt won the game, but that's not the issue. My point wasn't proved on the floor, but instead in the section of stands so blithely referred to as the Oakland Zoo.

During Quinn's rage against the cosmos, a chant began to fester among the mostly unshowered kids, clad in our kind-of-gold-but-not-really T-shirts, and finally broke open like an angry tempest, likely because of a correct call by Jim Burr or Tim Higgins. (You're welcome for the photos, by the way. I know you were like, 'Jim Burr, who? *click* Oh, yeah, that guy.') You might remember the chant if you were there, if you were watching on TV, or if you were somewhere within earshot of the arena. Otherwise, it's since been forgotten, and that's probably for the best.

Since I'd like to keep Jose's Mesa PG-13 -- therefore discouraging today's tweens from buying tickets to Spy Kids and 'mistakenly' wandering into Bad Boys 2 -- I will not repeat the chant here and instead do what any responsible adult would and link to somebody else's blog post that does mention it about halfway down. (The trick is finding an appropriately rated movie on the same side of the theater as the movie you really want to see, then having your friend's mom buy you tickets anyway.) Yes, I was in the Zoo that night. Yes, I almost assuredly took part in the chant. However, five years passed before I realized that night's true significance, when one of Pittsburgh's most gracious outdoorsmen flicked me off at an intersection.

By the time this latest batch of Amazing Chicken had won yet another battle in its ongoing war with my intestines, a Sports Illustrated showed up in my mailbox. 'SPORT IN AMERICA' it read across the cover, 'This is where we tell each other who we are.' I flipped to the back to scour this story, stopping briefly to sniff the Calvin Klein ad, and read about halfway through until I started to doze off (Happens a lot when I read). Before slipping away to dream about something weird, I'm sure, the story reminded me of a presentation I made as a senior at Pitt, in which I discussed the merits of college football as a civil religion. (If it's late and you can't sleep, go ahead and read that.) In it, one of the points I discussed was that on the field of play, a certain level of violence was sanctioned, and I played this video.

If you're able to ignore the video quality that I'm sure was awe-inspiring in 2002 and just be happy that I found a clip that helped get me an A (Forgetting that it probably took me all of 10 seconds to find after searching the exact title, 'Hard college football hit'), you'll realize that if our guy Dwayne Slay, God bless whatever life insurance firm he's probably working for now, hit that guy that hard in the street, he'd have gone to jail. No question. But that's the magic of sports. When we're out on the street, shopping for groceries or waiting in line for the port-a-potty, we abide by physical laws and verbal guidelines necessary to hold off the complete degeneration of society (Maybe not around port-a-johns, that was a bad example). When we're on the field, or in the stadium, though, both of those pretty much hang out in the parking lot until the game is over.

What we know is that it's OK to be recklessly passionate about sports (We'll save the 'Why' for somebody more qualified to answer). Cheering is encouraged. Gloating occurs. Verbal abuse is taken. Had the guy who spawned this whole story been wearing a Ravens jersey down at Heinz, I likely would have engaged him in a savvy back-and-forth of F-yous and F-YOUS! (Hey, I'm the guy who unabashedly provoked a fine gentleman in a Bowling Green jersey before a Pitt game, because I knew Dave Wannstedt would have my back and not lose to a MAC team in the season opener following 13-9 .... OH WAIT.) But, this time, because I was driving through a mall parking lot to go get dinner, I was stunned to see this dude's middle finger raised through the glass.

Those were normal circumstances, and I am not Dominic Torretto, even in make believe normal circumstances. Sports are most certainly not normal circumstances, real or make believe. Instead, I think they fall somewhere in between -- real and make believe, that is -- and, deep down, while we all can't be Mike Lowery, Aladdin or the Beast (or the Beauty, you know, if that's your thing, and that's fine, nothing wrong with that) one of the next best things is seeing the Beast wearing your favorite colors. (#TeamBeast on Twitter.)

Unless you're the Browns.

Then you're like, #TeamCogsworth.

Yes, he's the fat clock.