Fly Eagles Fly

I indirectly credit the mid-1980's Eagles for my transformation from a good student to the once-in-a-generation towering intellect that I am today.

Here's the story. In that era, the Eagles got beat, a lot. And badly. In my college dorm I would watch the bludgeoning weekly with the burning question how are we going to lose today? A concrete crucible cubicle of pain.

Inevitably, I thought the next game we would finally win. But, the same result, week after pathetic week. A loss. Like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, my hopes would be dashed against the rock-strewn fields of reality. I would feel like crap the rest of Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday. I would get bruised by it all. And would come back to the Master on Sunday for another whupping like a dog. 

I finally arrived at the point where I refused to watch further Eagles games and started to head to the Library to study. That one decision moved me from the loss category of life to winning. I had figured out that when the ship is going down, and the ship is pretty unimportant existentially, I had no duty to go down to the depths with it. Swim away. It was as if a millstone had been cut from around my neck. Once I decided to hit the books, instead of watching the football farce on television, I felt like I had escaped a prison of my own making where I valued the wrong things far too much, as signifiers of my own success or lack thereof.

Since then, I have become a no-fault fan of sorts. Don't get me wrong. Now that I work and have Sunday afternoons free in the Fall, I watch every Eagles game I can. Last year I powered through each game, with the record at the end being 7 Wins and 9 Losses. Those Wins no longer lent me glory and neither did the Losses detract from it. It is entertainment. And the second I got morose and depressed about how the Eagles were playing, I checked myself.

The demons of 50 plus years on non-Superbowl wins has been cast into the sea (the 1960 Eagles won the championship, but was before it was the Superbowl).  I know it is pretty suspect that a city has to base its worth on a football team, but this victory probably means more to Philly that it would have to any other city in the United States. Maybe Minneapolis? Another team that has gotten very close over the decades, only to lose in the end. 

This season of course was magical for the Birds. A lot of injuries and adversity hit the Eagles but they kept coming back for more and eventually defeated the Dark Side Patriots in a thrilling Superbowl. I thought one of the key plays was from Nelson Agholor (above) on a crossing route where he and Eagles Tight End Zach Ertz slap hands. Another Eagles receiver enters the fray to keep Nelson A. from being gang-tackled after the reception. That one for all and all for one mentality carried this team on their journey from being so-so last year to superlative this year.

I have been really heartened by the team's authenticity. A decent amount of the team are Christians and not in a smarmy "Thank God for winning" type of deal. Win or lose, these men would have been giving glory to God and that was refreshing. (As a backstory, one among many--for those of you in-the know--Nelson A. was lost in own head last year. An immensely talented receiver, he couldn't catch balls. Dropping passes right on the mark. I thought he needed to be cut. To the coaches' credit, they stuck with him and Agholor made many key plays this year that helped the Eagles win).     

Even my Dad--an avowed anti-Pro sports persona--enjoyed the game. We had planned to get together to watch the 1965 epic film Dr. Zhivago on Saturday and he stuck around Bierkergaard World Headquarters because my car was hemorrhaging transmission fluid and I had to take extraordinary measures to deal with it Saturday and Sunday. Which lead to another hemorrhaging...overall the loss of $2,300 from by bank account in a week's time for car repairs. 

I am at that tipping point with my Honda Civic. It has 160,000 miles on it. Most of the repairs were wear and tear but then I got word that my right axle broke. Even I knew something was wrong when the mechanics had to push my car manually back into the garage of the Jiffy Lube. I said to myself, "This doesn't look good." It was 5:30 at night. The manager assured me they could get the part and do the work that evening. I know that it wasn't the smartest move to bring the car to Jiffy Lube to start for the yearly inspection. The Honda usually sails through with only minor issues. I knew that I needed tires. But it turned out to be a day of reckoning of sorts with the automobile. Because the car has been so dependable, I really haven't had to find a local garage that I can trust with the work in the prior decade.

I inquired at Jiffy Lube as to whether they really had the mechanical chops to do more than the simple stuff like brakes and shocks. He assured me that they could handle it. In retrospect, when they unknowingly broke the right axle's seal when installing the axle, it suggests an over-reach. To their credit, they had the car towed 30 miles and did the repair Superbowl Sunday in the morning, all at no cost to me. I still have a few bones to pick bill-wise for the diagnostic inspection at the dealership on Saturday that pinpointed the problem, the rental car, and my stopgap visit to an oil change shop this side of the river as a first-step to figure out what the leaking petroleum-based substance was on my driveway Saturday morning and the emergency re-fill of the transmission that was completely empty.  We will see if the transmission took a mortal blow because of the lack of lubrication. If the transmission goes, it is bye-bye to the car I think. Even though it has new tires.

Dr. Zhivago wound up being a depressing yet panoramic tale. The car is back on the road. And the Eagles won the Superbowl.  Such are the days of our lives. Sometimes the wind is at our back. Sometimes it is in our face. Paul writes of "light and momentary problems" and how Christ provides peace. Even our joys and victories have little staying power, for everything in this world we will ultimately lose. That's the final scoreboard. What we have become in the world, for good or for evil, is what we take into the next.