Petesophizing...

I must be emitting a vibe sitting in the park waiting for my herons because people want to talk to me. Saturday a total stranger, a softspoken guy in his 40's, sat down next to me as if I were a monk about to reveal today's koan.

I was smoking a pipe (yes, a pipe) filled with Uhle's Blend #71. On my lap I had a copy of Norman Cantor's Twentieth Century Culture. My uninvited companion, not really so much looking for delicate wisdom, needed to unburden himself.

The daily grind of his associate ministry at an inner-city church had him soulsick. His job hunt has netted only part-time delivery for a dry cleaning business. And his wife of seven years has developed agoraphobia: she sits frozen in their house, denying any problem exists. He apologized to me several times during each anecdote.

I really wanted my birds and to dip back into Cantor. But I couldn't ask him to leave. He was sitting down, literally at my feet -- I have one of those portable chairs. He was in the lotus position. What a gesture that sitting down was. He committed! -- and he committed me. I didn't really want to speak and he didn't really want me to speak, but the situation, the posture, the silence, demanded it.

I said: "You're a caretaker now and you're no good to anyone if your own mental health dissolves." It was too much. Too intimate.

A further silence.

Finally, I said, "I can't believe Packer season is starting again," because he told me he grew up in Green Bay.

"I think I was the only man in Green Bay who hates the Packers", he said, with some relief for the change of subject.

"I'm sick of Favre", I said. "The buildup to this season feels uneasy."

"I know", he said. "A losing season. My best friend works for a domestic violence crisis center up there and she told me on Sundays -- when the Packers lose -- women all over town get beat up."

Not exactly where I expected the conversation to go. My mind did a double-move, wanting to acknowledge his sincerity but uneasy about the mythical texture of this statement.

But is it true? I haven't found a straightforward answer yet.

(I shot these pictures at the Minnesota playoff game two years ago. Doesn't the statue of Vince Lombardi in front of Lambeau have a Cold War, Soviet Bloc feeling?)

What I have found is some interesting articles.

On the relationship between sports fandom and self-esteem: SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY; It Isn't Just A Game: Clues To Avid Rooting, from the August 11, 2000 New York Times.

On the relationship between self-esteem and violence, Exploding The Self-Esteem Myth, from the January 2005 issue of Scientific American has got me thinking. And rethinking.

Professor Robert Cialdini, who I've read in another context, is one of the pioneer researchers on the subject of sports fandom. I'm moving his book Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion, to the reread shelf.

What an odd encounter. But he got me thinking.