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A big guy wearing a green hoodie stabbed me in the stomach just outside my apartment building today. I was listening to the most recent See You Next Tuesday album on my brand new EarFun noise canceling headphones, so I didn’t hear him come up behind me. But I didn’t panic. This wasn’t the first time I’d been stabbed. Instead, I gritted my teeth against the roaring, icy pain in my side and applied pressure to the wound with my right hand. Then I tossed my wallet at the guy’s feet, lay on my side on the cold sidewalk, and protected my head with my arm.
Amid all this, I accidentally popped my left headphone out of my ear. Now I could finally hear what the guy was yelling at me. For some reason he thought I was the current field goal kicker for the New York Jets, and the stabbing was his revenge for me missing two field goals and one extra point in yesterday’s game, a contest against the Seattle Seahawks in which the NY Jets lost by three points. That loss was the team’s sixth in a row, and it dropped them to 3–8 on the season.
But I did not tell the man that I knew any of this. I did not inform him that I spent $497 to attend yesterday’s game between the NY Jets and the Seattle Seahawks. I did not tell him that I was the man sitting alone in the stands behind the north end zone last night, wearing a homemade, three-foot, green foam, airplane-shaped hat atop my head. I did not tell him that I was the man who frantically scrambled for the football Garret Wilson threw into the stands after catching his second touchdown pass of the game with 3:54 remaining in the third quarter. I did not tell him that I was the man the national television cameras caught tearing the very same football from the thin and soft arms of the seven year-old boy who originally caught it moments earlier.
No, I did not tell my attacker any of this. Instead, I lay on the salt-crusted sidewalk and waited in trembling silence. I waited to hear the sound of the man’s footsteps receding down the street. I waited to hear the wet thump of his knife penetrating my torso once again. It didn’t matter either way. I no longer cared about the future. With a record of 3–8, there was no chance the team would make the playoffs anyway.
