We arrived in Seattle on this date in 1983, after leaving Arizona and meandering up the coast for a week. I don’t know what gifts are appropriate for a 36-year anniversary but you’re welcome to try.

I rarely think about those first weeks in the Northwest, because they weren’t all that great. We had no money, and although I got a job pretty quickly, it didn’t begin for a few weeks, plus a week or two after that before a paycheck.

And then other things, mostly the result of two people getting married and almost immediately leaving everything and everyone behind. It was cold and dark, and I kept being surprised by the geography. I drank a lot of beer and watched a lot of football games, trying to find something familiar to balance out the constant disorientation.

I had a favorite NFL team already, but I watched the Seahawks because their games were always on. It was a fortunate season; after 8 dismal years, they picked a good year to become exciting and make it to the playoffs, very nearly the Super Bowl. I became a fan.

Football is a lot more problematic these days, and I’m never sure why I’m watching other than inertia (and pleasure, of course). I either watch condensed versions of the game days later, or I keep it on but get restless, background noise to the rest of my day. I don’t seem to have the patience to sit and just watch a football game.

I watched most of last night’s game, though. It was primetime and I was busy making dinner, so it came in handy. A big rivalry, a significant divisional game, and those godawful lime-green uniforms Seattle apparently is going to insist on wearing in these games (because they’re 4-0 wearing them, duh) all made for novelty, at least.

And it was a great game, two evenly matched teams with no obvious bad blood, everyone on their best behavior. There was a nice tribute to the late Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder who owned the team from 1997 until his death last year.

There was a lot of scoring but it was evenly divided and never reached stratospheric heights. Both teams seemed efficient in a symmetrical sense—both sides missed a field goal and failed in an attempt at a 2-point conversion, and the game came down to one point and a kick that sailed slightly right of the goalpost for a surprise home victory. All good fun.

And I got a metaphor out of it, or something similar, so even better.

...

There are always officiating problems these days. The game moves much faster, and we still rely on human beings for the most part. What can you do, but shrug? Mistakes will be made.

Some people don’t shrug. More in a bit.

In the middle of a long touchdown drive, Russell Wilson scrambled around, looking for a receiver, before ending up near the sideline and then just throwing the ball away for an incompletion. They were just past midfield, and it was only first down, just a blown play.

As he threw, though, a defender tackled him. As they collided, I thought I caught Wilson’s head snap back, but I wasn’t sure. The referee threw a flag for roughing the passer, although on replay it was obvious that it was a clean play, no foul at all, although it was close and I understand the urge to toss the handkerchief.

It was still a bad call, and the Seahawks got 15 free yards and a new set of downs. It took them seven more plays to finally score, on fourth and goal from the 5-yardline. It turned out to be the winning score, although there was a bunch of game left. No one was talking about the call turning the game around, at least not on TV or in the reports following the game.

People do talk about this stuff, though. Last year, the Rams got the benefit of a bad call, and ended up going to the Super Bowl. Fans of their opponents, the Saints, were pissed and very vocal about it, even though there was plenty of time to still win the game following the penalty. Understandable.

But I heard a lot of noise that I always hear in these situations, regardless of the sport, which is that some NFL cabal decided they wanted the Rams to win, not the Saints. No matter that this sort of collusion would be immoral, if not illegal (I have no idea). No matter that not once, as far as I’m aware, has a former referee come forward to say, yep, the big bosses told me to fix a game. I still heard a lot of this last year, either explicit or implied. The fix was in.

It just struck me that this might be a default behavior for humans, or at least a big chunk of us. When life gives you lemons, you intuit a giant lemon conspiracy. Could be George Soros, hard to say.

And here we are. Some of us are more inclined toward conspiracy theories than others, but it’s never far away. Our current constitutional crisis is a direct result of people plying these theories to rapt listeners and viewers, and in this case one of them is the President of the United States.

I think I’ll stop there.