Did I Do That?

Posted: Thursday March 31, 2011 under Random Thoughts

We’re watching our college basketball team play to get into the Final Four. Five or six of us. The game’s tight and one of my friends keeps leaving the room. He says the team messes up whenever he’s in front of the TV.

When we lose, by a basket, in OT, I, naturally, debate how much to blame this guy. He did spend most of the game listening from the porch, which potentially helped the team a good bit, but maybe those few minutes of his tainted presence in the room was enough to put us under.

The next day I’m at a New Agey seminar with some other friends. They invited me even though, or because, I was dubious and kind of mocking of this particular speaker. One of the friends threatened to beat me senseless in the parking lot if I “jacked up” her alignment. Sure enough, the event is not as good as ones she’s attended before (even though I actually enjoy it), and she blames my negative vibe, in part anyway. I thankfully escape without a beating.

On the two-hour drive home, alone, I start to ponder how much power I truly do have, how much control any of us have over anything.

Take those kids on the basketball court. For all their practice and preparation and abilities, aren’t they really just at the mercy of that woman wearing the same shirt she wore last time they won, or that guy who barred a friend forever because of that horrible loss that one time he came over, or that other guy who won’t let anybody mention how well the team is doing until there’s under three seconds left in the game and they’re up by at least ten points?

Hundreds of people in the stands, thousands upon thousands of people sitting in living rooms, all pushing and pulling that ball in and out of the hoop, determining whether that 3-pointer drops in or not, whether that foot’s on the line or not, whether that ref makes the right call or not.

With all the positive and negative energy battling it out around us, it’s a wonder our hair isn’t sticking straight out, or falling out. Forget about cell phones giving you brain cancer.

On the other hand, if I, by myself, without even trying, was able to jack up my friend’s alignment at the seminar, if I caused all those people to ask those challenging questions to the speaker (that I loved and my friend hated), if I caused any number of “bad” things to torpedo the quality of the event, then doesn’t that make me some crazy powerful wizard or something? With that kind of power, I should have easily been able to deflect my friend’s TV-taint during the basketball game. No way we miss that basket at the buzzer. No way that other team comes back from an 11-point deficit in the last five minutes. No way.

Unless.

(A lot of potential variables here, a lot of complex interactions to consider.)

My positive power for the basketball game could have been dampened somehow: getting up on the left side of the bed that morning, maybe, or unknowingly putting on a negatively charged pair of boxers. And if someone else stepped on a crack on the way into the house, and someone else passed a black cat or something like that, those three things together could easily have given our friend’s TV-taint the upper hand. And who knows what other people brought to the party.

We’ll have to be really extra careful next time. This is some pretty awesome power we may all have, and it can, obviously, be pretty easily jacked up in the end.

Fingers crossed.