Just call me the force-man

2. My dog and I like to play fetch; she deposits a ball at my feet, I hoist, aim and let fly. Hazel tears off in blind joy, and I scan the skies proudly for the ball I must have put into the air … somewhere. After a few moments, man and beast become aware that something is off. Hazel slows, I look down. The ball is sitting, as if my magic, at my feet. Ah. I let go too late again and threw it, effectively, straight into the ground. Hazel trots back. Wise master, she seems to say. How did you fetch that ball before I did?

Thanks to the aforementioned reasons — and many others too numerous to list here — this much has become clear to me: My athleticism defies statistics, animal instinct and gravity. Put another way: I am very. Very. Good at sports.

For a time, I found my superiority alienating. I had trouble watching the efforts of professional athletes with any any interest (they mean well). Besides, I could already talk sports in my sleep: touch-zones and down-lines, hitting out, running home, fouling oneself, offending the defense and defending the offensive. Sub-par putting eagle boogies. Scoring 50-HATE in a game of tennis. There was nothing new for me to learn, I felt. Then they installed TVs in the new cardio room at Dillon Gym. With ESPN.

Since that fateful day, I’ve become the captive audience of an inordinate amount of instant replay. At first, I watched all the on-field behavior with amused detachment. But when you’re riding a stationary bike, you start to wonder (first about the oxymoron of ‘riding a stationary bike’ and, when that goes nowhere, literally, you turn to the Larger Questions). One day in this manner, I saw a seven-foot-something basketball player complete a masterful play. Lifting his arms slowly and flexing them above his head, he strode to the sidelines and seized a nearby water bottle; towering over a flock of flashbulb-ing paparazzi, he screamed his own name, over and over, squirting the water in jets toward the crowd like a sorcerer conjuring the elements.

And it occurred to me: Life would be approximately 10 to 15 times better if we decided, as a society, to live a little more like that guy.

I fell to contemplating parallel situations in my daily life. 8:30 a.m., precept … After a particularly perceptive comment about the passive imperfect in antiquated colloquial French, I rise out of my seat and take to the desktops, stamping above the heads of my peers, tossing handfuls of notebook paper into the air. “FORESMAAAAAANNNN. FORESMAAAAAANNNN.”

I could begin referring to myself in the third person as “The Force-man.”

Or even … the time leading up to said famous “academic perception maneuver.” 8:26 a.m., final Sleep button. Translation seminar in four minutes. Chalk-drawn “X”s and “O”s pop up around my dorm room and the voices of ironical ESPN correspondents ring out as I sprint from dresser to desk to door, dodging piles of open books and dirty laundry (“Word from the coaches is that Foresman has been cross-training for this … but she’s looking a little sluggish rounding those corners. Am I right, Bob?”) As I chug uphill toward East Pyne Hall, a dotted yellow line trails behind me (“Wow…looks like … her right shoe is falling off but … oh! She takes it off and just keeps goin’! What a tank!”)

2:29 p.m., sociology class. Slow-motion instant replay of an awkward wave to someone across the lecture hall, complete with play-by-play commentary (“Unsure if fellow student is looking at her, or the person behind … Her gaze feints to the right, Force-man’s hand is up … Yikes! Look at that eyebrow raise. We haven’t seen a winky-look interception like this from the Cincinnati Awkwards since middle school!”)

Dean’s Date. Slip that paper into the professor’s mailbox, pull my shirt over my head like a face-harness, and run through McCosh Walk with my arms splayed like airplane wings, a trusty peer hired to run behind me yelling “GOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLL.”

Teachers, priests, politicians, parents never seem to stop peppering their moral instruction with phrases like “teamwork,” “hitting it out of the park,” “three strikes” and on and on. I’m tired of getting all the integrity of sports metaphors and none of the perks. Fellow players. I say: Time to stop stagnating in the bowels of the Stephens Fitness Center and unleash your inner athlete. Stop playing by the rules of the quotidian, start playing by the rules of the referee of Awesome. Call me impractical, call me terrifyingly irrational. Just call me the Force-man.

Becca Foresman is a French and Italian major from San Diego. She can be reached at foresman@princeton.edu.