I hate my cell phone.

November 20, 2009 · Filed under Decathlon, Footy, Musings · Tagged Dobie HS, Nimitz HS, Pearland HS, Plano HS, Seven Lakes HS, Taylor HS, Thierry Henry

At what point in time did my cell phone become so important to me, that when I leave it at home for an entire day, my friends are worried about me?  That might say a lot more about my friends (don’t know how genuinely concerned they were, but they were at least concerned enough to come to my house) than my dependence on my cell phone, but my lack of merely responding to texts and phone calls was enough to arouse concern.

And I hate it.  My cell phone has me tethered to a world I sometimes do not want to be a part of.  It seems immensely more difficult to live in my own world when I’m 19 and have a much more developed brain than when I was, say, seven; yet when I was seven, I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to in my spare time.  Nowadays, it seems like I have to grant permission to my society to do what I want.  Maybe that has more to do with responsibility than technology, but that cell phone binds me to tell people what I’m doing if they’ve already shown interest in what I’m doing.

Ramblings, that is.

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Okay, if you haven’t heard about the “main du Thierry” yet, you’re probably not going to want to read this.  If you have, then I have a few personal problems with how Thierry should’ve reacted versus how reality truly is.  As a football player my whole life, I’ve developed a sense of “football ethics”.  Now, some of these are quite obvious: if you manhandle one of my teammates, be prepared to feel the reciprocation; you don’t yell at the ref, the other team, the fans , etc.; you don’t be a dick and sit in front of a dead ball.  Stuff like that.  Hand balls in the box, however, have been an iffy point since I started.  If I sit back and view this from a general moral perspective, Thierry should’ve stopped playing the ball and let it go out.  But, if I introduce “football ethics”, it becomes much less clear.  In football ethics, you play the ball until the point of a ref whistle; since there was none, Thierry played it cooly to Gallas, and introduced France ’10 to the World Cup.  AND YET, I still get a linger of doubt; he COULD have stopped.  He SHOULD have stopped.  But what would France have done if they went on to lose that game?  Does Thierry get praised for being a righteous player, or does he get berated for the sake of his country’s pride.  It’s a hairy question, and only Thierry knows what the feeling is right now when “football ethics” becomes intertwined with a nation’s pride.

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Decathlon season started.  I’m very excited; excited to see students back competing, to see surprise teams and disappointing years for top programs, and to see what my alma mater Pearland HS can do.  I still have a large amount of team pride two years later; I truly want them to win their third state championship in a row, because they have the capabilities.  However, it will be hard pressed for them this year; Houston-area rival Seven Lakes HS and region V rival Dobie HS are packin’ heat this year.  SLHS comes into Round 1 season as my favorite to lift what is probably the lamest trophy I have ever seen.  They barely lost to a solid Canyon Del Oro squad, and have continued to show improvement.  Dobie, meanwhile, is bringing back a lot of firepower from last year’s second consecutive fourth place finish, and have the history and cojones behind them to just as easily claim their fourth state championship.  Plano HS out of Dallas is the only truly unknown factor as far as powerhouses go, but I’m not feeling winds of change coming from the plains.

Preliminary guess for regionals:

1. Seven Lakes 46.8k

2. Pearland 46.4k

3. Dobie 46.3k

4. James E. Taylor 44.7k

5. Nimitz 44.4k