It's been a long time since I shot some pool. When I was a teen, it was a regular activity of mine, along with playing pinball. I had a terrific advantage as a player: almost everyone I knew who shot pool and played pinball was a boy besides me. So there was a certain distracting novelty in my presence, yes, and I certainly enjoyed that as an advantage. And there was an assumption of innocence, naivete, and incompetence that these boys maintained with the girl. So I could usually manage a small hustle. Not much, mind you. I wasn't amazing at either of those activities, but comparable to the average small-minded pre-feminist era boy, I was competitive.
I played through my teen years into college and a little during grad school. The last time I played, I remember clearly because it was the occasion of a personal epiphany.
I was part of the engineering team at Bloomberg News. Most of the work the group did was being on round-the-clock duty for the broadcast side of the company--radio locally and television internationally. We were also responsible for making new studios work, also internationally, and a few other interesting tasks. My job was mostly administrative--herding the kittens. I'm not an engineer and never have been one, but I do speak their language, for the most part, and act as translator when the need arises, which, with engineers, is frequently.
The fun of working at Bloomberg News back in the day when Mike was still in charge was that Mike gave free reign to a lot of folks. Our guys were often stranded in the building taking care of things so we could order food. My boss could return from a convention with a list of cool new gadgets to play with and Mike thought that was worthwhile. And it was customary to have a department celebratory activity now and then for morale-building. I organized one such event at a local pool hall.
We drank, we ate, we laughed, we de-compressed, we played pool. Although I was well out of practice, I did manage a few beautiful shots now and then and demonstrated that there were skills, if rusty, to the delight of my nearly entirely male team (post-feminist now, you know).
Between showing off, however, I hit a really amazing shot that I still remember as if it were yesterday, which it certainly isn't. More like 15 years past, if I remember right. The table was fairly full--it was early in the game. I hit the cue ball very hard, trying for a tight corner shot at the opposite end of the table which I should totally have made, at least in my more practiced days.
The cue ball missed the target corner ball and with the huge force of energy, ran all over the table for a good five or six seconds before it wound to a stop. But somehow it didn't hit anything. It didn't sink itself, it didn't sink another ball, it didn't even tap a single ball. It just bounced fiercely all over the table and then stopped.
The boys who were around the table howled with laughter at my incompetent shot. And then I said something like, "Hey, it's just like working at Bloomberg! A lot of energy and no results!" And we all laughed some more. It was, for me, the first times I saw a metaphor in my life--not studied one, but it saw it in front of me. It was an epiphany.
So last night around 1 am, Peter Parker shuffled into my room with The Little Tramp and handed him to me. He was running in circles in her room. The room has no rug on the floor as we removed it after he made a huge mess shortly after his return from the hospital (see previous posts). So his little paws were clicking on the hardwood floor as he ran in circles and it was keeping her awake. I took him, pushed sleepy Peter back to bed, and closed my door.
For two hours, he ran in circles in my room. But I have a rug. And I was reading, not sleeping, or attempting sleep. He went from running in a very tight circle by the door--about three feet in diameter to a larger circle around the rug--about six feet in diameter--and back again. And then finally he settled down to sleep and after half an hour or so, I returned him to Peter Parker's room, where I knew he would be happier. I listened for a few minutes at her door to be sure he wasn't running and clicking and then went to bed myself.
I'm seeing so much of life as a metaphor these days: hitting a pool ball super hard without any results; running in circles for hours at a time; checking the web for jobs; applying; doing it again. Lots of energy but no success.
