Ride Away

My day yesterday was marked by disappointment in my leisure life. My favorite football team suffered its worst loss in team history, and as if that wasn't enough, they also contributed towards a likely defeat in my fantasy football league. This defeat would keep me out of our playoffs, and so you can see how I was an insufferable basket case. I badly needed something to distract me and lift my spirits. Luckily something came up.

Some friends had concocted a plan to see Christmas lights. What kind of person could remain in a foul mood in the face of that? Although it was against my nature to disengage from the poisonous atmosphere I had, I forced it on myself in the hopes that I would become someone who would be grateful that the angry me had done that. I remained upset at the outset of the experience, but that began to melt away.

We were on our bicycles, and this made the experience nice. We rode off towards some of the nicer, more domestic neighborhoods to the east, and we were at liberty to stop for the least little thing. It's always nice to have a low threshold in order to explore properly. We would just park the bikes, stretch our legs and see what there was to see. Sometimes there would prove to be several houses. We saw some rather nice ones.

Easily the most memorable was a particular one where they really pulled out all the stops. It was the sort of place where I can't imagine they have any other interest the whole year. There were countless elements to the display all over the lawn and roof, there was music, and there were little signs on stands. One sign advertised that they had been on a local news broadcast rundown of the best local Christmas light displays, and there were even QR bar codes leading to their website.

By the end of it, I had managed to get over the momentary rage. The sorrow that had given rise to it remained, but proved to be less alienating. Anyway, I turned up other ways to divert myself, and the day finished tolerably well with repeated reminders that my life is rich with reasons to be happy outside of how my favorite team and my fantasy team do. It took time to really internalize that, but at least I didn't put a fist through the television.