"moving forward and letting go"


that was going to be the theme for 2011. at least, so i said way back in january. i am not really sure how that all worked out, but, maybe by the end of this post, i'll have a better idea.

was i everything i wanted to be this year? was i the best father i could be? was i the best lay leader? was i the best boss? probably "no" on all counts, but maybe i'll give myself an "a" for effort. maybe you won't.

let the grading of the resolutions begin. for full context and an all expenses paid trip back to HACAJAM, circa january, click here.

1) don't die - done, unless something really crazy happens in the next three hours. happenstances in and around our family have me less interested in joking about death tonight, so i won't. i am thankful that i am alive. i am thankful that i have my family and friends around me. i am sad for my wife and her family that is dealing with something incredibly hard and painful and fucking horrible right now. lamar wade, a gentle soul that was never anything but nice to me. we talked about church, religion, his children, his children's children and my children over many thanksgiving and easter lunches. my life is more wise and more grounded for the very few opportunities i had to be around him. godspeed into what is waiting for you, lamar. we'll see you soon.

...

don't die? check. thank god. i am still not ready to leave this place. not for a long time i hope.

2) see fewer doctors - check. "moving forward and letting go". every time i go to the bathroom, i still wonder if i'll pee blood again. every time something on the left side of my back tweaks or twinges, i wonder if it's alerting me to something dreadfully wrong. this year, though, in contrast to 2010, i didn't go see a specialist every time something scared me. i swallowed the fear, looked at myself in the figurative mirror, and told kevin michael o'kelley to get busy living. some days, it worked better than others. some days, it didn't really work. but i did see fewer doctors. i saw my urologist once way back in january. i saw my primary care doctor twice. dermatologist once. that's it. well, that's it unless you count my two very recent visits to my new chiropractor. that has less to do with fear than it does with my hope to be able to continue running for a long, long time. two for two.

3) don't get fat - back in february at the first visit with my pcp, i weighed in at either 188 or 191. i couldn't really tell, but it didn't really matter. either number would be the heaviest i had ever been and that number accompanied with the doctor's nurse saying, "it looks like you had some extra cake over the holidays", was all it took. i got in the car, called sarah and told her that the nurse called me fat, and i vowed things would change. my running had started. i then decided that i would no longer eat, too. well, i ate, but i drastically changed my habits. i swore off of fast food. i ate one to two very small meals a day. and i ran. and ran. and ran. and ran. the weight dropped off. i saw results, so i kept not eating. and running. by the time i went back to the doctor, i had dropped thirty pounds and was as lean and in shape as i had ever been in my life. it wasn't the healthiest diet or way to go i don't guess, but i've found a good place now. aside from the aches and pains associated with the running, i feel great. i raised my good cholesterol and lowered my bad. don't get fat? i guess i was kind of fat at the beginning of 2011. tonight? not so much.

4) run - yeah, i did that. what started in the dead of winter as a random ass idea grew into something quite serious. i couldn't run a mile without stopping for the first month. now, i can run six miles and have something left in the tank. what a crazy, crazy transformation. i am very proud of myself with this one, maybe more proud than most resolutions i've documented on this blog. a lot of people claim to run. not many people are runners. i am runner now. son. of a. bitch.

5) find kiker and andy again - hmm...mixed results on this one. i got to see both this year. kiker and i will play softball i would guess until our bodies no longer let us do that together. i was able to help andy out through a tough spot and we worked together for a couple months. there was more to this resolution when i made it than those things, though. what i missed in january and what i miss now is feeling close and connected to my two closest guy friends in ways that don't only involve softball or facebook. when we get together, the chemistry that we've always had makes it easier to feel like it hasn't been months since we last saw each other. but still, months continue to pass without us seeing each other, and i haven't been able to fix it. i still want to, but this is my first miss. here's to better results next year.

6) buy some freaking music - fail. fail. FAIL. i bought some music, but when i made this resolution, i meant buy music like i used to buy music. one or two records a month. find new artists. turn andy or amy onto those new artists. rinse. repeat. i just didn't. i bought several that i really liked. kanye and jay-z. the wonder years. childish gambino. but i don't think i bought more than ten all year. and that's just sad. it's also a miss.

7) see julio play in a football game - wrought out of the pain of losing julio to the pros, in january, most mock drafts had julio headed to st. louis, cleveland, or cincinatti. all i wanted was to think that once we knew what team he'd play for, we could schedule one road trip to tennessee or atlanta if he came through one of those cities and see him play pro ball during his rookie season. the rest, of course, is already documented. draft night came. the falcons traded up. they picked julio. we got season tickets that night. julio missed two games we attended and parts of two others due to injury, but this one, we covered. see julio play in a football game? after tomorrow, we'll have seen six.

8) help move limbo into its next phase - "the goal is for limbo to stay fresh and exciting and kinetic in a way that will motivate our established base to include even more of our friends and family as we move towards a productive calendar year." 

i don't know if i am the best judge for this one. then again, of course i am. it's hard because i don't know if this one was a success. if we measured our success on the attendance of our christmas party, then limbo is healthy and relevant and vital to more people this year than it was last year. i am worried that our routine on sundays and throughout the rest of the year may be becoming stale. stale is probably the wrong word. predictable, maybe? not exciting? i don't know. i still very much look forward to limbo every week. i get more, spiritually, out of those conversations than i do with any other part of my week. i just would like to think limbo would move along fine without me, even if i don't really want to move along without it. i am not sure if we are there yet. but i do think we are close. i am rating this one a push. 

9) don't be a lame duck lay leader - fail. fail. FAIL. i knew entering 2011 that i would have no interest in continuing in the role of lay leader past my third year. what i didn't see until it was too late was that i didn't have a whole lot of interest in continuing in the role. period. at least, not every part of the role. i enjoyed being a voice in the room of conversations that looked ahead into the future of humc. i didn't enjoy feeling hamstrung by the same cycle of reluctance to change that we faced in the beginning of 2009. by the time the second half of this year rolled around, i didn't think i was the right person for the job. i didn't hear anyone tell me otherwise, and so, i am moving on. early on during next month, i'll take a closer look at the job we did in the last three years, but if my goal was to not be a lame duck lay leader in 2011, it was a goal i did not achieve. i truly appreciate the opportunity that was given to me by 19 voters in the fall of 2008. i will continue to be a voice for change and rethinking church here and around the campus. i will be honored to continue to serve on sprc. third miss of the year. 

10) get a dog - funny that i ended this year's list with "get a dog". i think this one had more to do with the hope that we moved into a bigger house. and that was before we added a third baby girl to our already crowded abode. i did like the thought of having a man's best friend again. now? not so much. not that i don't like the idea of our girls having a dog to pal around with in our future back yard. first, though, we've got to get that new back yard. fourth miss. 

so, the final tally? five for. four against. one undecided. not bad. not great. all in all, i'll take it. 

2011 will go down, ultimately, as the year we found june. and that is a wonderful thing. 

"moving forward and letting go". 

i am not sure that any one thing is more complimentary of that idea than introducing a new human being to this world. the operative word feels to be "moving". i am not past my fears. and i am not complacent enough to be one of those people that says life moves by too fast. i am somewhere in between. learning to be a father of three. a better husband. a better friend. a better boss. 

moving forward. letting go. 

just keep swimming. 

girl, you'll be a woman soon


i haven't written about hannah, specifically, in ages.

it's not that she's any less special than she was in the early years of this blog. it's not that she's become boring. it's not that she hasn't done anything worth writing about. to be honest, for a while now, she just been the least volatile of the on-goings in the world of the o'kelleys. for that, truly, she probably deserves some sort of medal.

since hannah started the second grade back in august, though, times, they are a changin'. the age that she and her classmates currently occupy is a weird-ass age. 7-8 year-olds are still incredibly impressionable. any time she comes home from school, church, or the henson's house, or time with amy and katie, she's picked up some new mannerism or tone or inflection that i know she didn't pick up from me or her mommy. sometimes, the newness is cute and becoming. most of the time, it's kind of cringe-worthy, mainly because you can tell most of the act is a mimic. a subconscious and innocent mimic, but behaviors she's witnessed and is trying on for size. whether it's snapping her neck, rolling her eyes, drawing out her syllables, or constantly exclaiming that something is "amazing", there's a part of me that wants to shake her and say, "hannah, you are better than this."

i don't shake her. she isn't better than "this", because "this" is relative. we are all sponges. no matter the age. hell, if i read a killer column by bill simmons or bethlehem shoals or tommy craggs or will leitch or whomever in the world of sports, there's a great chance, intended or not, that i'll rip some element of their style off the next time i sit down to write about sports, myself.

my eight year-old is no different. it's just the imitation is ratcheted up to the 100th degree. hannah hasn't had a chance to develop a niche or personality or creation of her own just yet. i suppose you could play the "there is nothing new under the sun" card and argue that all of us are nothing more than snapshots and memories and left-behinds of those in our circle of influence that have come before us. as a cynic's cynics, i get that take. i just don't buy it now that i am a father of three.

as hannah and caroline have grown from infancy to toddlerhood to the level of kid that hannah is at now, each step of the way, a parent can witness someone truly and genuinely unique in their eyes, the way they watch the world, the way they smile, the kindness that is born in them and into all of their early interactions, among hundreds of other things that are just...them.

then the world takes over. their parents and their parents' friends and their family and their daycare teachers and their sunday school teachers and their friends and their friends' families start to socialize and condition all the snowflake right out of them. the older they get, the more their looks remind you of the people they spend the most time around, the people they look up to, the people they see on television, the people they begin to think are cool versus those that aren't.

"hannah, why are you making that face?"

"what face?"

"that face. that face that i saw half your class making when i went with you to desoto caverns. that face.

"oh, i don't know. i guess i like that face."

"stop making that face, please."

"no, daddy. nothing is wrong with that face."

"hannah, that face is a mean face. it makes people think you don't like them."

"no, it doesn't, daddy. it's just a face. don't get so uptight."

"uptight. what the fu..? do you even know what uptight means?"

"sure, daddy, uptight means...uptight. you know what uptight means."

"i do know what uptight means, hannah. i need you to stop making that face just because your friend makes that face."

"fine, fine, daddy. i won't make that face."

...

"hannah! you just made the face again."

hannah makes all kinds of faces. she's a fucking smartass all the time, likely because i or the kids in her class or the older kids she hangs around with are smartasses all the time. i can't really fault her for it. she gets it honestly.

"ugh, daddy! leave me alone."

how many times will i hear that over the next ten years? 100? 1000? more than that?

it's not that she's a woman yet. it's just that i see now she's going to be.

we kidded around with each other christmas day about how old she felt. she put on this koala hat that she's wearing right now. the looks she made felt older. the things that were coming out of her mouth felt older. the way she took control of us going to get chinese take-out after her birthday party felt like i was being bossed around by the older sister that i never had.

it's something that i'll be tracking closely in 2012. there will be more hannah specific posts. and caroline specific posts. and june specific posts. as i get out and away from the church a little bit, i hope that i'll have more time to document them instead of the bullshit around them.

when i look back on my childhood, i have more vivid memories from my third grade year than any other in elementary school. i feel like this is going to be a big year for her. for all of us.

as we make intentional efforts to move out and up into a bigger house early next year, it may mean hannah changing schools and putting all of her learned behaviors to a test she hasn't really studied for. if that ends up being the case, i hope that i'll have my finger on her pulse in some ways i may have missed over the last 12 to 24 to 36 months.

happy birthday, first baby girl. here's to the next 8 years.

don't hate me.

turn a (catch)phrase


SCRIPTURE RIP ALERT: "and when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that i'll be there." matthew 18:20, the message

about a month ago, i riffed on worship as seen through my own eyes just having witnessed the facebook thread that would never end dealing with the same subject matter. i won't rehash the entire conversation here, but just so you don't have to waste your time clicking on the above link, the short version goes like this. i wondered out loud to my facebook nation, "why didn't i miss worship?", even though i had been out and away from the sanctuary for a number of consecutive weeks. people answered the question for me. people told me they missed me. people got a little offended that i had let myself miss as many weeks as i had. people also got offended at the implication that there wasn't a whole lot there to miss. people defended worship. people defended their own methods of worship. and people finally let the conversation die without us ever coming up with an answer to the original question, "why don't i miss worship?"

not that i was really looking for an answer. i was just looking for a conversation.

the fact of the matter is i already knew the answer. i didn't miss worship because i didn't look forward to it in the first place. i haven't in a long while. that's not to say that i don't look forward to seeing the people of huffman or being in a place that calls to mind memories laid before me by the ghost of christmas past. that's not to say that i don't enjoy seeing my daughters sing in front of their church. that's not to say that i don't enjoy how much caroline looks forward to seeing ms. charlotte and ms. kay and ms. jane. i do enjoy all of those things. it's just that most of them, if not all, don't really have anything to do with how i worship.

saturday night at "christmas in limbo", i worshiped.

what's interesting about that particular evening and most every gathering of limbo is our "worship" order is always quite "traditional", at least for us. there was/is food. there was/is fellowship. on saturday night, there was also catchphrase.

that's it. that's the list.

no message. no offering (unless you count the food). no message boomed or spoken softly (or joked around/about then boomed and/or spoken softly) at the congregation from a pulpit that is designed with visibility/superiority/expertise (your choice) in mind.


"when two or three twenty-six are gathered together because of me, you can be sure i'll be there."

less than five points into our first of three (the third being a classic) games, someone uttered "fuck." in frustration, quickly alerting those new to the "fold" that this wasn't your grandfather's catchphrase. this was more than a game. it was going to be an experience. a journey. a path to enlightenment.

just like always.

the more thought i have given to the idea of corporate worship over the last several weeks, the more convinced i am of the one thing any corporate worship gathering should be. an experience. if the service, on the whole, does not leave you feeling like you've been witness to something that you couldn't have gotten anywhere else, what's the point?

how we read "experience" is every bit as personal and unique as how we might feel "experience". to each and every one of us, those that choose to collect in a house of faith, we will enter that house with certain expectations and we will leave that house with those expectations exceeded, met, or left wanting.

when i have entered humc's sanctuary for the last however many years, i haven't been left wanting. i expect exactly what tends to be produced. the normal order of worship. a different collection of hymns each week. a new-ish anthem. a message. a benediction. a communion once every four weeks. i don't expect to be wowed. i don't expect miracles. i expect a gathering that feels like we are going through the motions more often than not, and those expectations are not often disappointed. not that there is anything wrong with that. as was noted in the november 15th post, for some, there is something very right with that.

so, what was it about saturday's game of catchphrase that was different then?

well, it's hard to put an exact finger on it, but i'll try.


as proven by the early exclamation of "fuck.", their was an immediate air of honesty in the room. novel, right? by saying that one dirty word, it was announced to the circle of humans playing that you could feel free to be yourself. you didn't have to dress up. you didn't have to put away your blue language that you may or may not use in every other walk of life. you didn't have to pretend to be something you were not. you just had to...be. whatever that meant for each and every person in the room was as different as you and i, but it also defined a certain solidarity that couldn't have been identified through a praise chorus or a scripture reading.

there was something else going on outside of the genuine airing of grievances, though. it was more than that. it was also that those in the room had gathered not out of obligation but out of intentionality. anyone that has been to a live sporting event to root on the home team knows the feeling that i am talking about. chances are you will have never met that guy in front of you with the retro jersey on before the game, nor the woman behind you with her face painted, nor that dude beside you that is way too big to have only paid for one seat. if the home team does something extraordinary, though, you are bound, almost by an understood contract, to go apeshit with them by sharing in high-fives and bear hugs that last just a beat too long. the same could be said for the limbo gathering. even split into two different teams, our reason for gathering together that night was similar. there was something about that group or someone in that group that we wanted to be around. every one of us shared that same concern.

did we take time out from the game for a group prayer? a devotional? to whisper our innermost thoughts into a confessional camera in the butler's pantry? no, we didn't, but we are totally doing the confessional camera next year.

no, we didn't do any of that, but we showed up in one place together saturday night because almost 100 weeks ago, a small group was established with one of founding tenets being "church can't really suck this hard, right?" (in so many words)

now, do i believe that limbo is the most special-ist place on earth and we can't begin to hope to find that atmosphere in other places within a community of faith? no, of course not. as a matter of fact, a degree of it will also be present at the weeds gathering tomorrow night. common threads? honesty? a belief that a gathering of "church folk" doesn't have to be all "churched" up, and a want to be there. i don't think it's a coincidence that tomorrow, a meeting away from the church grounds, will likely be one of the highlights of the weeds' year.

so, what does saturday night and all of this mean to your current perspective on worship?

it's a good question. i think it means that all is not lost for the general idea of corporate worship. but i also think it means that it is beyond time to reexamine what worship really is, why we do it, and what we want to get out of it moving into the next generation of huffman united methodist church. it doesn't mean confrontation must happen. it only means honesty does.

in this story, tradition is not the bad guy. tradition has brought us here and asked us to evolve. if we do not, tradition will be our legacy and our future will be written by the next congregation that buys our campus.

that seems like a sad way to go out.

limbo is not the answer for everyone, i am sure of it, but i'd like to believe it and groups like it could provide a blueprint, or a talking point at the very least, for a new way of doing "church".

in the meantime, thank You for saturday night.

amen.

confessions of an alabama football "fan"


let's get this out of the way first.

before you think it or feel compelled to throw the term at me as a pejorative, i am beating you to the punch. as i have mentioned here and in other posts here on HACAJAM, i am fairweather fan. in every sense of the word, i am fairweather. even with the teams that i love and live and die with the most (alabama football, atlanta braves, atlanta falcons, alabama basketball...in that order), if they suck and don't show much potential for improvement, dude, i am off that boat.

it's not that i'll only root for a winner. i love a good underdog story, and, shoot, nothing stirs my drink in a more bonds-ian way than when one of my teams is being given points. no, it's not that i'll only root for a winner, but i will only root for a team that is intentional about wanting to win. and by "win" i mean compete for the highest of titles in their respective leagues/conferences. for example, vanderbilt may say that they want to win, but they don't really mean "win" by my definition. the lack or resources afforded to vanderbilt football do not set their bar of accomplishment at "sec champs". to "win" at vanderbilt means to hopefully beat tennessee once every ten years and maybe go .500 in-conference. unless you are a vanderbilt alum or a masochist, i haven't the slightest clue how someone could be interested in that program.

the same can be said for many, many professional teams as well. in major league baseball, in spite of how much i love my friend, philip gibson, his pirates will never actually compete for a world series title, not when three other teams in THEIR OWN DIVISION are willing to outspend them. the same goes for the astros, a's, royals and a handful more of other teams. through no fault of their own, the championship bar in baseball has been determined by the "have's". exceptions to the rule like the a's of ten years ago or the rays of the last three years only prove the rule. they are cinderellas only because the stars are or were aligned in just the right way for them to compete, talent-wise, with the "have's" over the course of a 162 game season. their deficiencies are then ultimately exposed in a best of 5 or 7 game series, the nation nods in approval of those mighty "mights" and their achievements, and then we move on to celebrate a world series champion with a 85-200 million dollar payroll.

(see also: 2/3 of the nba, 85-90 percent of "big-time" college football)

for me, myself, and i, these odds against winning it all would be too great for me to waste my time with.

for me, the value of my sports fandom can be measured in these ways:

1) can my team potentially and legitimately win their league/conference this year or in the next three seasons?

2) if not this year, is there work happening in recruiting, free agency, or a farm system that leads me to believe the "three year plan" is potentially and legitimately realistic?

3) is there a superstar that i can own and attach my man-fan-wagon to in a way that will interest me and engage me on the field and off even if my team of rooting interest is struggling to find consistent success?

that's it. that's pretty much the list. for me to be a card carrying member of any team during any given season, only one of these three criteria must be met.

i'm still relatively young. i have a little disposable income. pay free agent lebron james to come to miami? i'll be a heats fan and buy a t-shirt. sign ichiro to an otherwise irrelevant seattle franchise ten years ago??? i'll buy the bobblehead and look along interested from birmingham, al. draft alabama wunderkind wide receiver, julio jones, to play only two hours away from me? i'll convince my wife and friends that we should get falcons season tickets.

there are many, many more examples of such impulse in my sporting fandom i am sure, if i sat down and thought about it long and hard enough.

...

and then, of course, there are exceptions to my own rules.

as much as i love my alabama football team, as much as i love knowing about them and following them and talking about them, this year has been a struggle for me, even though they easily cover all three of my fairweather fan qualifiers.

i call it my julio jones hangover.

way back during his junior year in high school, julio hooked me in as being interesting. as a junior at foley high, he was already considered the best wide receiver prospect the state of alabama had ever produced and he was already considered a university of alabama lean. over many a dreamland lunch, andy, kiker and i swooned at the idea of bama having a dominating presence at wide receiver. through its rich tradition and history, it's the one thing (outside of the heisman) the school had really lacked. not that alabama has ever been considered a passing school, but, then again, maybe they could be.

yada, yada, yada, julio came. as i documented for over three years, his impact was almost immeasurably positive. alabama did not become a passing school, but julio's skill-set opened running lanes for mark ingram and trent richardson in a way that eventually proved the school to be heisman worthy. julio left last year as the most accomplished wideout in the history of the school, won a national title, and was drafted sixth by the falcons in the 2011 nfl draft.

when julio left the capstone, though, it left a julio-sized hole in my heart. it left me scrambling for a supernova of a super freshman to hitch my man-fan-wagon to. if i couldn't find that freshmen, the season, no matter how highly thought of the team as a whole would be, would feel less exciting. and so, i attached my love to dee hart, a rich man's version of lsu's former waterbug, trindon holliday. i attached my love to dee and then...??? shit. dee tore up his knee before fall practice even officially started.

dammit.

i kind of went into an alabama football daze after hart went down. i loved trent, of course. and hightower. and my little terrorhawk, mark barron. but i didn't love them like that, you know? not like julio. not like i wanted to love dee.

and so the season started.

one of the crappy things about following alabama football in the new, golden age of saban ball is that once the season begins, there are really only four-five games on the twelve game schedule that alabama can legitimately lose. alabama has become so efficient, such a juggernaut, that a loss to someone outside of lsu or arkansas would have required a state of emergency being declared. their sheer depth of talent and skill and resources and coaching render most opponents moot before the game even begins. and while that process proves entirely fascinating during the offseason and can make the football team a 365 day a year show worth watching, once the games kick off, the result is hardly in question. it's one thing i have found completely fresh and wonderful about the falcons this year. in the nfl, the falcons can absolutely and potentially lose every game they start (as can the packers for that matter, which makes what they are doing so special). you can live and die with the product on the field. the same can't be said for alabama football. you can tell yourself that auburn or tennessee or penn state or florida had a chance to win, but some honesty and forethought might tell you otherwise. i digress.

and so the season started.

alabama blows through their first 8 opponents. they average just over 39 points. the average margin of victory is just over 32. the closest any one opponent gets is 16. they use the pre-julio alabama formula for success in all eight games. run the ball. run the ball some more. play action here. one deep throw a game there. overwhelm the other team with a suffocating defense. impose will. win game. rinse. repeat. to some alabama fans, this was immensely exciting. this was the product of all of the recruiting and the money and the saban and the history and the tradition and the best of the best that alabama football has to offer a player or a fan manifested as unstoppable force/indestructible object.

to me, i'll be honest. it was boring. what i wanted was more creativity in the offense. take some chances. fling it around a little. be more aesthetically pleasing. wear a black jersey. just do something, anything, a little different from what every alabama fan knows and loves.

i caught flak for saying as much on facebook, pining for the excitement that came with being a fan of an auburn team that's just barely good enough to beat utah state, because at least the utah state game made you feel something. wishing i could somehow claim oregon and their flavor of the week uniforms and their zippity-fast athletes flying all over the place. long tenured bama fans scolded, "go, dammit. go be an auburn fan!" "are you kidding? you should LOVE this type of smash mouth football!" "this. is. alabama football, you heathen!" "sounds fairweather to me." can i say for just a minute how fucking retarded the few fairweather comments i got on facebook and off were. truthfully, weren't my comments the opposite of fairweather??? you can't really get any higher up on the mountain than alabama football right now. fairweather would mean i had left the mountain during times of trial and now wanted back on. that wasn't the case at all. i kind of wanted off the mountain in these times of utmost prosperity. anyway, maybe there are other definitions of fairweather out there that i don't know about. i digress again.

i caught flak for calling alabama football, in-season, boring, but, again, i just wanted to feel something, anything.

and then i did. lsu came into alabama having already played a game that they could have lost versus "my" oregon ducks. they didn't lose. they destroyed them. they had played a game versus the eventual big east champ, west virginia. they didn't lose. they beat them worse than they did oregon. they embarrassed florida, same as alabama and kicked the crap out of auburn. they came to tuscaloosa with an edge, with a number one ranking, and with the only real shot of blemishing alabama's season.

and fuck it all. they won. in overtime. in one of the most dramatic football games i've ever watched. both defenses brought their "a" game. alabama's offense showed sparks of trent, a dash of creativity, and several more scoring opportunities than did lsu. but they couldn't convert enough of those opportunities. they let lsu hang around. regulation ended in a tie. aj mccarron showed his nerves during overtime. and lsu escaped tuscaloosa with a win and started driving down this now ridiculous road of being considered an all-time great collegiate team.

i was heartbroken, but, looking back, i think i was a little happy. if nothing else, even though it was sadness i felt, at least i felt something, anything.

and thus the switch turned back on. the julio jones hangover ended, and my alabama football fandom was back. i fumed at their shitty play versus miss. st. i refused to watch a meaningless game against a lower tier opponent in georgia southern. i digested the undressing of their arch rivals in auburn and genuinely hoped that some of my auburn friends felt some of the same pain i had allowed myself to feel last year during the greatest iron bowl meltdown/comeback ever. i rooted for their misery and hoped it felt bad, if only for a couple of hours 'til we all came back to our senses and realized it was "just a game". after all, it's not schools we root against. it's our friends and family that don't see things the way we do that we hope are hurting. (kinda screwed up, really.)

i felt something during the auburn game most especially because of dominoes having fallen and stars having aligned back in the favor of "my" alabama football team. if they beat auburn, they would have their second chance at lsu.

they did. and they do.

it's funny to me. as much as this year's team has accomplished, i am already waiting for next year. i want to see dee hart and tell him that i love him and that i wish him well. i want him to light the sec on fire in the same way lamichael james has done so with the pac 10 12 the last three years.

in the meantime, though, my switch as been flipped. my fairweather flag is waving proudly behind me. i am 34 days away from alabama playing for and possibly winning their second national championship in three years. it's going to be incredible. it's going to be insane. i will yell. and scream. and cuss. and eat. and it will be wonderful, because alabama is going to win the scoreboard this time, not just the game.

let's be honest. we are all fairweather fans of some thing, some place, or some one, whether we choose to admit it or not. and there is no shame in admitting it.

just admit it.

i'm the pot. you are the kettle.

roll tide.