Pins and Needles

Readers of the Timbecca blog may remember the dilemma I had when I attended the state high school wrestling tournament in February. I watched every round of the two-day tournament, but had to miss the grand finale, the championships, on Saturday night.

So I ordered a DVD of the final round and have been waiting patiently for the past 12 weeks for it to arrive in the mail. Meanwhile, I've been avoiding all the state wrestling websites because I didn't want to know what happened until I watched the DVD. I want to experience the competition in real time. In this, I have been successful, and I still don't know who the state champions are.

When I paid my $40 cash to the high school girl sitting at the table at the state tournament, she told me it would take "8 to 10 weeks" for me to receive my DVD. She also gave me a generic receipt and a card that had the name of the company responsible for the DVDs on it. So last week I emailed the guy at the company, and asked if I was still on the list of people to receive the DVD.

He responded that I was indeed on the list, but that production had been held up because of a lack of "sponsorship funding." I don't understand this. I paid $40 for a product. What does sponsorship funding have to do with it? And how long am I supposed to wait for this "sponsorship funding" to appear? What if it never comes? Will he refund my money? He ended by thanking me for my "patience and understand." [sic]

I would go to the IHSAA website (the people who run high school sports in the state) and complain, but I'm afraid to go to their wrestling page, because I know they always congratulate and list the state champions there. And I don't want to know who that is until I've watched the video.

The irony of all of this is that the reason I missed the finals to begin with was to go with Rebecca to a Valentine's-related event that she really wanted me to go to. It was a few weeks after she first told me she was thinking of leaving me ("ground zero," I like to call it) and I gave up going to the finals, an event I'd been waiting for all year, in order to try to save my marriage. It didn't work.