A Caramelized Obsession: Billy Graham, Chocolate Cupcakes, And The Lottery

     Everyone has things that fascinate them.  It might be a hobby, a sports team, a celebrity or something completely transparent and fleeting.  Do I have mine?  Sure.  I'm a well-known Kansas City Royals fan since the mid 70's, still being able to recite the starting lineup of that era and most of the starting pitchers and bullpen.  Do I love my Diet Mountain Dew?  Yep.  And do I play the lottery once in a while when it gets up there?  Sure.  Have I ever won?  No.  And the certain proof of that?
     I'm sitting here writing this.
     In typical overkill fashion, I get fascinated about things that fascinate me and the random order in which they happen in my life.  Yesterday morning during my usual scouring of YouTube for interesting and obscure stuff, I somehow stumbled on videos of evangelist Billy Graham.  (I think I started out by looking at an old Association clip, and from that went to Nebraska football highlights, and from that...)  Doesn't matter.  

     Dr. Graham - along with comedian/actor Robin Williams - are probably the only two people who when I see them on television I'll always stop what I'm doing and see what they're saying.  Both have "it", that indescribable something that's given to few people.  Dr. Graham's amazing speaking ability and powerful presence allows him to reach the masses with his message in a way that I'd submit no other modern human being has ever had.  I remember watching him on the old televised crusades and being totally mesmerized.  He preaches the word of God but never - at least to me - comes across as "preachy."  Powerful.  Intense.  But it seems like he holds just enough back to make you go the final step to the message rather than completely dragging you to it.  It's a subtle difference, but it's one that makes ALL the difference.

     Now to the cupcakes.  The Hostess Corporation recently announced that it will cease production of its line of snacks, including the legendary white squiggle-topped cupcakes, which I remember taking to grade school in my metal Batman lunchbox along with my thermos of milk and my spam sandwich.  I have a different kind of obsession with these than I do of Dr. Graham.  This is more of an instinctive love of mine, borne out of the Bavarian in me whose genetics calls out to me to like baked things.  Sweet things.  So it's not really my fault, you see.  Standing in the snack aisle of the grocery store the other night in front of the white squiggled boxes, well, I was not in control.  Of course I had to buy some.  My verdict:  The competitor's version (since the Hostess' were of course long gone) was OK.  Sort of metallic-tasting in a way.  But...a chocolate cupcake is a chocolate cupcake:  Even when you screw them up, they're still pretty good.

     Lotteries are a lot like cupcakes:  You know they're not good for you, but you can't resist them.  I bought a ticket like a great many people did the other night for the $580 million dollar jackpot but like I said, I didn't win.  My attitude is this:  Someone has to eventually, and sometimes you have to stand still and let destiny and fate find you.  You have to give it a chance or being the impatient lot that it is, fate will move on to someone else.  People coast to coast - and several who were in line with me - bought tickets and cozied up in their own little way to Ms. Fate, hoping that they could still tempt her.  There was a herd mentality going on, a group obsession with the art of the impossible and hoping that for once basic rules of mathematics and chance didn't apply to our lives.  For some people in Missouri and Arizona those rules didn't apply; for the vast, vast majority of course they did.  
     So we have three kinds of obsession; three kinds of suspension of reason; and three kinds of a mental fog that we float upon to places that calm and more sensible weather would never take us.  One, we become spell-caught by a fellow human being who has seen things the normal person has not and has the ability to describe it to the masses; two, we are rapt in wonder by a sweet-soaked gem wrapped in the cloak of a basic human need; and three, we are enthralled by - while being caught up in mob group-think - the chance to climb the Impossible Mountain just as our ancestors did when staring off at peaks in the distance.  In each case, we really can't help it.
     Nor do we want to.