The Weekend Eudemon

Memorial Day Weekend 2005. Weekends like this keep Eric Scheske awake at night with excitement.

What does he have planned?

Nothing. Absolutely flippin' nothing, except reading, writing, playing with his children and, if he's feeling motivated, drinking wine. To make it even better, two new books that he ordered from Amazon over a month ago finally arrived yesterday, almost as if the postman was saying, "You'll need these for your fantasy three-day weekend, Mr. Scheske."

It's what Upper Westsiders in Manhattan coined "Me Time," possibly the most nauseous phrase ever created. With seven children, the Me Time will be punctured frequently with Kid Time, but that's all right. Me Time isn't made for people with kids, and any parent who hasn't figured that out should be on the Child Protective Services watch list.

Eric's doctor has also advised him to postpone his gallbladder surgery indefinitely. It seems Eric's stomach problems were making the gallbladder seem worse than it really is, so Eric is going to hold off at least three months, possibly five or more years. A friend at Catholic Exchange has also hooked Eric up with a chiropractor/nutritionist who understands Eric's gallbladder problem and thinks he might be able to take care of the problem naturally. We're all for that.

Change of Topic: We've never ranted about soccer, mostly because Eric has two children who play it (including a daughter who appears to have a lot of talent for it), but we're going to mention it here. Our beef with soccer is its proponents' determined and uncompromising attitude to get it accepted in the mainstream. We've referred to its proponents as "brown shirts" in other writings.

In our town, the brown shirts have succeeded in getting two soccer seasons, though there has always been a gentleman's agreement to have only one season for each sport. The brown shirts tried to misappropriate a brand new park facility; built for soccer and football, the brown shirts claimed the fields were too nice for football. The brown shirts get defensive when anyone speaks poorly of soccer, and they push everyone to recognize it as a sport (which it is) on the level of, say, baseball (which it isn't).

They apparently have had great success. This Spring, the local newspaper has provided intense coverage of the high school girl's soccer team. The team was pretty good (11-7). While out for a walk earlier this week, Eric heard the PA system at the high school stadium announcing a game. About a minute before he got there, the other team scored a goal to break a 1-1 tie. As he got there, time expired and the game was over.

Eric looked at the home team's stands, and he could count 28 people. 28! This is the sport that's going to revolutionize American recreation? There are 16 girls on the team, for crying out loud. Our town is known in the region for its tremendous support of athletics (the home side of the stadium holds about 500 people). The next day he found out that it was a playoff game and the loss ended the girls' season.

Eric's father always said, "Soccer is the sport of the future and always will be." There were soccer surges after WWII and in the early 1970s, and both fizzled. This most-recent surge seems better orchestrated because they've really pushed it with the kids, but we wonder: Is soccer really that great in a country that has football, baseball, basketball, and hockey? The rest of the world plays soccer, yes, but the rest of the world didn't start off with those four sports.

We're skeptical.

The Punchy Journal
. . . After the Jacobin sucked the euphoria out of my lungs, I walked home quickly, there to find my wife cleaning up after a long day with the punks.

"Well, hard business meeting," she says, smiling but with a little sneer. She's happy to see me have fun, but it's hard on her, saddled with six little kids, when I'm out.

"Yup," I say, flopping into the E-Z chair, "had to visit two different clients and discuss ten issues."

"You drank ten beers!" she exclaimed, sitting down on the couch, relaxing, probably for the first time since 7:00 that morning. "You're going to be hurting tomorrow."

"Actually, I'm not positive it was ten."

"You lost count?"

"Yeah. May have been twelve, might have been eight."

My wife gave me her mock accusatorial look. "And what is the difference between 'may' and 'might?'"

"Ummm," I said, laughing, realizing she'd picked up on a verbal trick.

"I think you once told me that 'may' indicates a higher level of probability than 'might.' Is that right?"

"Yeah," I said, suddenly getting drunkenly sober, like a guy roused from a deep sleep. "I could be in trouble tomorrow." I'm going to drink some water and eat something."

Thing about drinking is, I get nasty hangovers. There's no rhyme to it, either. Sometimes I drink three beers and feel bad the next day. Sometimes (though not often enough) I drink eight beers and feel fine.

I've asked doctors about it, but they don't know. I've speculated that I'm allergic to alcohol, but a doctor friend said it's not likely. "You'd be sniffling and sneezing, not holding your head and/or vomiting."

I've speculated that its somehow a "psycho-somatic" thing, a revenge of a conscience that feels guilty about drinking. One doctor said that's possible. Thing is, I don't think there's anything wrong with moderate drinking and, indeed, I think it's a good thing. I've considered giving up drinking altogether, but concluded that such abstinence in my case would be a borderline sin, so decided against it. Such attitudes hardly square with a guilty conscience.

Maybe I'm such a finely-tuned physical, mental, and spiritual machine that any tinkering with its parts throws it off.

That's my favorite theory. . .