Mollynonymous

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

"Save" us from disaster

I came to the realization tonight that I need Armando Benitez.

For those who are keeping track, I haven't blogged in almost 2 months. I have been utterly fucking slammed at work, which means that intolerable quantities of human misery of the child variety have been mine to manage, leaving little time for much else. One of the few things that I have been really looking forward to (given that my job persists until 8/31) has been the baseball season. I planned my weekends around Spring Training game broadcasts, people: that's how bleak it's been.

Given all of this, observe the return to my life of one pathetic excuse for a closer, the aforementioned Armando Benitez. Armando gets paid millions of dollars a year to warm a bench, groom his pencil-thin beard to laser precision, and give up 2 runs each time he has a "save" opportunity. I yell at him. A lot. My neighbors may think I am perpetrating violence against Captain Awesome, such is the rancor of my dissent against his pathetic and narcissistic existence on my team.

So why do I need Armando? I realized tonight how good it feels to hate. Pure hate, with no consequences, guilt, or confrontation. I can displace all of the anger and frustration I feel about the unsolvable problems and misery I face at my job onto the pucker-faced paunchy person of a man who, tonight, could not make it from pitch to pitch without readjusting his genitals. (Seriously, they started cutting away from him between pitches to keep it a family program- it was that bad.)

I need the righteous indignation that Armando so fills me with, indignation at a job done so poorly and paid so well that nothing can explain it but the unfairness in the universe that I deal with daily. At a time when I must regulate myself incessantly in a constant process of self-censorship at work as I mediate between kids, families, and legal systems entrenched in disaster, it feels good to totally let loose at a total stranger playing a simple game (and playing it poorly). Combined with a glass of wine, hollering at Armando is the best stress relief I've had since this horrible season at work began.