Hike! That faint smell of leather means that football is in the air. Saying that, I realize I'm putting forward a double entendre. I could either be referring to a football that is physically positioned in the air, likely as it soars between the quarterback's hand and its intended target—or, I could be using the term colloquially, in the metaphorical sense, to say that football as a cultural activity is now surrounding us like the very air particles we breathe. Neither use would be surprising—particularly because the National Football League season began this weekend, leading to both a ubiquity of attention directed toward the activity of football, and, I'll wager, a higher than average number of footballs being flung around by fans inspired by watching their favorite teams play.
"Enough discussion," you say. "In which sense were you using the term when you said it?" A fair question. Or is it? Your (likely unexamined) expectation that you, as a reader, are entitled to know a writer's personal intent is one that might benefit from a bit of interrogation. After all, who are you to question me?
"Who am I?" you reply. "I am mother. I am father. I am sister. I am brother. I am woman. I am man. I am human. I am friend. I am lover. I am killer. I am servant. I am master. I am god. I am Satan. I am earth. I am sky. I am water. I am fire. I am everything. I am nothing."
Well, OK. You got me there. One of those, and I won't reveal which, was the answer I was looking for. So here's your answer in return: I was using the term "in the air" ... in ... the ... sense ... of ... however you interpret it! One of the wonderful things about writing is that even though we may share a common language, our sense of meaning is inherently individual. When I went up to your father, pointed at you, and said to him, "It would be a shame if you never saw your son again," my claim in subsequent court documents was that the ineffable impossibility of determining shared context in a world rife with uncertainty meant that his negative reaction was entirely unjustified, and that the blame for everything I did afterward therefore rested on his shoulders. I guess this argument is one that only philosophers could sort out, though the judge did not rule favorably on that argument.
Football is in the air, as the Jaguars defeat the Indiana Colts 31-21.
“Jaguars Junction” is an independent source of football analysis unaffiliated with any professional sports franchise.
