Holy Oak Tree!

Recently, a disgruntled Alabama football fan poisoned the cherished oak trees at Auburn University, their arch rivals. The trees were a rallying point for celebrating Auburn's success at football where the Auburn fans would 'decorate' the trees with hundreds of rolls of toilet paper.

Pause. . .

Well, that's sad for the trees to be sure. What this shows though is what can happen when you swear your allegiance to something that is not real. Football is real enough but to live and die with the idea of the team is a different story. Being a fan is truly a weird thing. The team is different every few years, the uniforms change, coaches come and go, new stadiums are built. So, what is the thing that keeps you being a fan of a particular team? The idea of it. WE are the good guys. Everyone else is evil. Starting to sound a little familiar?

Also, the poisoner in question (now a prisoner?) is 62. That's little old for rah, rah, sisss boom bah, don't you think? I suspect, like many die hard fans, he never attended Alabama. Also, I'm interested in the whole idea of the trees themselves becoming 'holy'. The trees got connected to the football team which people had somehow become intimately connected with. (Excellent marketing?) So by association the trees were 'holy'. I say 'holy' in the same way that a chunk of ground, or a rock, a wall, a tasteless wafer, or a building can become holy by association with deep feelings about things that aren't real. To attack the physical object then is to attack someones cherished beliefs.

If one were to spit on the wailing wall or take a leak inside a mosque think of how much worse the repercussions would be while in fact it would really be about the same level of defilement as the killing of the oak trees. In fact the oak tree incident may be worse because there was the actual death of the living trees. When it's YOUR team, or YOUR wailing wall, or YOUR mosque things take on an elevated sense of importance that is way beyond what the true effect or importance is.

Oh, and none of this applies to Cub fans. We truly are the chosen ones as everyone knows and Larussa is Satan!