We live in an age of confession. I don’t mean so much the heartfelt admission to ourselves and our Creator of our manifold sins and wickedness as a loud and public proclamation of some character flaw that henceforth is expected to excuse unsatisfactory behavior.
There are those, and I am among them, who have been a little disgusted by the spectacle of public confession-as-excuse and its enabling pathologization: I don’t rob banks because I want money I didn’t earn, I rob banks because I suffer from bank robbery syndrome. So you must forgive it and let me proceed with my business and as a bonus, I get to feel noble and a victim — and “victim” is as noble as it gets.
Which puts me in an awkward position. For now I feel compelled to reveal my terrible secret, something I have hidden for years: the winter Olympics are underway and I shall watch curling.
Let my sorry tale serve as a warning to those lured by the siren song of the rocks.
It began two Olympics cycles ago. Going about my daily work, I often have a television on, the volume turned low but loud enough to get my attention should news erupt. Eight years ago it seemed that there was nothing on except curling.
If you don’t know curling, and there is no reason you should, here’s a very brief primer: It is a cross between bowling and shuffleboard, played on ice by people not wearing skates. It is played by teams. One person, called, I think, the pusher, bowls the curling thing — a big rock with a handle on it — toward the shuffleboard target very slowly. Two other people shuffle in front of it. They have brooms. They sweep the ice, sometimes very vigorously, in the belief that this accomplishes something.
The goal is to have the thing end up on a circular, bullseye target. But it doesn’t end there. The opponent, another team of a guy who launches the rock and his two friends with brooms, will try to knock the bowling rock off the target while leaving their own bowling rock in its place.
It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It is also, for feeble-minded persons such as myself, entirely mesmerizing.
Curling is not an athletic event. It is a drug. Watching it when not under duress is a pathological affliction. I suffer from it.
Why is it fascinating? To me, it has nothing to do with who wins. It has nothing to do with the strategy of the game (I assume there is one) or the scoring (I assume they keep score). It is watching that rock — called a “rock” — take its slow-motion trip down the lane, then stop or, better, crash into another rock in a kind of transfer of energy otherwise seen only on pool tables. I hope someone records the curling this year and speeds it up and puts it on YouTube or something. I’d love to see if it is the slowness of the thing that captures the mind. Perhaps watching it played faster is the cure to curling addiction.
Doing a little research, I find that curling was invented a long time ago in Scotland, the home of that other ancient game, caber tossing, in which medieval Scotsmen threw telephone poles while awaiting invention of the telephone. You can imagine how curling got started. Two guys are walking a long on an icy winter’s day, wishing they had worn something under their kilts, when they happen upon a frozen pond. One of them slides a rock far out onto the ice. The other says “I bet I can hit that rock with this rock.” The guys with the brooms are clearly a cruel joke played on dim bystanders who want to play. The game ends with the traditional “Captain, I can’t hold her together!” — oh, wait, that’s a different addiction.
Anyway, this was seen as fun and soon many Scotsmen would go out in the cold weather to slide rocks on frozen ponds. It is believed that Scots whisky was somehow involved, which could explain why it is called curling when to sober eyes the rock seems to go in a pretty straight line.
Strangely, there are not curling alleys in every town. Nor is there a Professional Curler’s Tour (well, there might be, broadcast on Bravo, but that would have to do with hairdressing).
Another mystery is why curling eluded the Olympics until 1998. Yes, I know it is astounding but curling did not join that festival of odd sports until 12 years ago.
Never mind. It’s addicting and I’m addicted.
So be on notice: having freely admitted this I am absolved. It is a secret no more. If you phone, I can now proudly declare that I can’t talk now because I’m watching the curling. No longer do I have to struggle for an excuse to get off the phone.
And you must understand this and say so sympathetically.
But don’t say it in condescending tones.
We addicts can tell.
Dennis E. Powell is crackpot-at-large to Open for Business. Powell was an award-winning reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio and becoming a full-time crackpot. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com.