400 words on pen pals, tennis, butt picking, The Office, and emotional eating
Back when I was organizing our office, I surveyed the collected remnants of my youth and noticed a pattern: I've had many pen pals. Steve, Lindsey, Annette, Johnny, Tony, and even a couple other shorter-term correspondences of one or two letters. Recently I've fallen into a new pen pal–type relationship with a lovely woman named Jill, who lives in Minnesota. Of course we're twenty-first-centurying the whole process and exchanging emails about everything from a mutual love of David Foster Wallace's work to the tennis pro tour.
Jill and I are both Roger Federer fans, so I was sad to see him lose to Novak Djokovic in the U.S. Open semifinals last week. (<--Segue to the rest of the post, FYI.) I told Jill that I have this weirdly complex emotional response to Roger Federer, because I love him as a player (and he seems like a super awesome guy), but I also instinctually root for the underdog, who he almost never is.
In the Open finals tonight, Djokovic took on (and beat) Rafael Nadal, the machinelike butt-picking Spaniard...
... who, while incredibly impressive on court, just doesn't have the finesse and je ne sais quoi of a Federer.
Turns out, Djokovic (incredibly pronounced Joke-ah-vitch, considering he's certainly the most jovial and wacky personality on tour)...
...quickly began to spank Nadal's wedgied little bum. Despite all logic and against all my principles, I began to root for Nadal a little bit—since he was turning out to be the underdog.
Sports just make me go emotionally haywire. I love to win, but I always feel bad for the loser (after I've gloated for awhile). I love for my team/athlete/whomever of choice to come out on top, but I inevitably despair for the vanquished opponents. It's nuts.
On top of all this, I now have to steel myself for The Office Season 7's "Goodbye Michael" episode, which we hadn't seen yet because we didn't have TV this year and had to wait for the season to come out on dvd because we got so far behind watching them online. I did the only thing I know how at a time like this: I bought a can of Pillsbury Grands Extra Flaky Cinnamon Rolls with Cinnabon Spices and Cream Cheese Frosting in anticipation of the emotional eating I'm going to need to do to get through it.