Beautiful Hubbub

I have lived a quiet life in the main.

Living single and celibate during my extended healing phase, I came to love solitude. I loved being on my own. I loved the peace and quiet. I still do.

And yet, a visit with friends is expanding my perspective and experience.

There is a general hubbub afoot. It was really evident while watching the Super Bowl last night.

No riotous reaction to goals scored or lost. No jumping up to dance with Usher during his mesmerizing performance. Even the Kansas City Chiefs last minute overtime win generated only a muted reaction (full disclosure, they were mostly 49ers fans in the room).

But there was hubbub. Comments here and there. A living room full of people. Pizza coming out of the oven and into appreciative bellies. The sound of ice tumbling into glasses and darting out to the washroom.

Hubbub.

Unfamiliar in recollections of my recent adult experience. Pleasant in the extreme. A life goal and wish, in fact, that came with my dreams for the new house.

I pride myself on a certain disdain for televised sports. It is the last resort of armchair ex-athletes reliving their high school glory days. Or so I believed.

I’ll be darned if I didn’t get fully engaged int eh Super Bowl yesterday. Where my intention was to hit the hay after the halftime show, I ended up hanging in there.

I was becoming acquainted with some players and their strongest moves. I watched Taylor Swift and her friends cheering on Swift’s boyfriend Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

It didn’t take long before I was cheering him on, too. Even if I wasn’t fully sure of what moves it was that I was cheering for. Such is the contagion of passion and enthusiasm.

And all the while, the low-key hubbub of friends in the living room percolating quietly around me. Steady. Lovely.

I have a strong suspicion I will neither be so derogatory nor disinterested when Super Bowl comes around next year.

Not if friends are with me and Taylor Swift is involved.

I thoroughly enjoyed my reintroduction to the low-key hubbub of socializing with friends. 

It is now not outside the realm of consideration that I might entertain creating such low-key hubbub again in the near future. Even without the Super Bowl.