600 Hours of Edward

all of this, I find that my thoughts are drifting back to something that happened a long time ago.
    When I was at Billings West High School—class of 1987—I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t have any friends, unless you count Mr. Withers, but he was a teacher. I kept to myself and did well in most of my classes, though I liked wood shop the best, partly because of Mr. Withers and partly because I was exceptional at it. “Exceptional” is Mr. Withers’s word. I love that word.
    One day during my junior year, a really pretty girl in my English class, Lisa Edgington, started talking to me. I didn’t really know what to say back. She asked me if I thought she was pretty, and I said that I did. That kind of embarrassed me. She told me that she thought I was cute, and that really embarrassed me.
    She told me that she wanted me to meet her after school, over near the football field. I said that I would.
    A few hours later, I was at the football field. She was there, too. She asked me if I wanted to kiss her. I felt blood rush to my face, and I asked her not to tease me. She said, “No, really, doyou want to kiss me?” I said I did. And she let me. Then I heard laughing. A bunch of kids from school were under the bleachers, pointing at us.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Lisa Edgington said to them, and she ran off with them, laughing. They went to the parking lot and climbed into a car and left.
    The next day at school, a lot of people were pointing and laughing at me. When I passed by her locker, Lisa Edgington wouldn’t even look at me. In English class, she didn’t talk to me.
    The laughing went on for a week, at least. Lisa Edgington’s silence went on longer than that, until graduation, and then I never saw her again. One day, a boy asked me in wood shop, “Hey, Edward, are you going to hump Lisa Edgington?” Mr. Withers overheard it and pulled that boy into his office and yelled at him. That boy came back to his seat red faced, and he never said another word to me.
    Is Joy-Annette like Lisa Edgington, only grown up?
    I don’t know.
    – • –
    Joy-Annette has said good-bye, and I have written her my last letter of complaint and filed away the green office folder with her name on it, and yet she continues to affect me. I am not happy about this.
    Today, for example, the Dallas Cowboys are playing against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and it is almost game time before I remember to pull on my authentic white Tony Romo Dallas Cowboys jersey. I like the white jersey better than the blue one, but whatever jersey the Dallas Cowboys are wearing on a given Sunday is the one I choose.
    Tony Romo is still hurt by a broken pinkie finger, and I am dubious about the Dallas Cowboys’ chances without him, given what I have seen so far from his backup, Brad Johnson. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a good team. The Dallas Cowboys are supposed to be a good team, but I just don’t know if that’s true unless Tony Romo is playing.
    – • –
    A few hours later, I have an odd sensation: The Cowboys won 13–9, but I have no joy about it. The Cowboys have won 298 times in the regular season since the first game I remember, that 1974 Thanksgiving game in which Clint Longley rescued the team after Roger Staubach got hurt, and I’ve been happy every single time. Today, I’m glad they won, but I’m not happy. I’m not sad, the way I would be if the Dallas Cowboys had added to their 210 regular-season losses since Thanksgiving 1974, but I’m definitely not happy.
    First, it was a terrible game. The Dallas Cowboys gained only 172 yards of offense, and I heard the announcer say that was the fewest yards Dallas had ever accumulated in a victory. Tony Romo accounts for way more than 172 yards a game all by himself.
    Second, Brad Johnson, again, did not look good. To his credit, he did not throw any interceptions, but he also seemed unable to pass the ball very far down the field. As it will be at least a couple of more weeks before Tony Romo is back, I cannot be confident that the Dallas Cowboys will be able to win like this again without him.
    It seems that the only reason the Dallas Cowboys won is that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers apparently have just as many problems as the Cowboys do, and I also heard the announcer say this.Tampa Bay kept driving down deep into the Dallas Cowboys’ end of the field but came away with just three field goals. It’s hard to win that way, harder even than winning with only 172 yards of