Near where I work in the restaurant, there is a small area with tables and two televisions. On weekends, the TVs are tuned to sports. I don't watch sports, so I never really know what's on and wouldn't care if it was the final inning of the last game of the World Series ever. I have nothing against sports, I just don't care and can't make myself care.
I'm a rarity among men when it comes to that.
I turned today, and found an impatient and beautiful woman standing next to a man staring at one of the TVs. He was tall, dark haired, and watching through a pair of sports sunglasses. She looked at me and shrugged, as if to say He'll come with me when he's ready. She looked like it wasn't the first, nor would it be the last time he stopped and stared slack-jawed at sports on TV.
I laughed. I said, "There's something about sports on television that stops a man in his tracks. They'll stand there for a long time unless some outer force makes them move."
She laughed. She looked at him as if checking to see if he heard us, but he didn't move a muscle. He stared at one of the televisions with a stillness that was almost eerie. He could've been a statue.
"He's worse than most," she said.
A few minutes later (there must've been a commercial), they walked by me and left.
Ten or twenty minutes later, they came back in from outside and walked past me toward one of the dining rooms. The man wasn't wearing his sunglasses anymore. He looked familiar. Very familiar, but I knew I didn't know him personally.
Then I realized where I had seen him before. On television. Almost every night on television, his is one of the last faces I see.
His is one of the last faces I see, because I usually turn the news off when they start covering sports.
The man staring stock still at the sports on TV was the sports director for the local TV station.
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