7 SECOND DELAY IN REAL TIME

As I have widely publicized before, I am married to a rabid sports fan whom I affectionately call the Professor. Sports are on in my household 24/7.   And since I do not give a wit about sports that leaves the Professor as the obsessed one (Pearl Bailey the dog’s only sport is Lizard Gulping and that is not a televised event- thank goodness).

Sports fans around the world are aware of the 7 second delay.  This is the delay in broadcast time to allow a margin for censoring and catching any technical errors or glitches.  That, in itself, is not interesting.  But this brief and somewhat fascinating fact is…the Professor has acquired an eerie ability to speak out the announcers’ EXACT words before they do! Even more so, this psychic ability of his even beats out the 7 second delay.  In other words, he has it before the network!  These occurrences actual happen repeatedly throughout whatever game he may be watching – play-by-play (no matter the sport) the Professor will call out a phrase and the next thing you hear is the announcer uttering the same sentiment.  I mean, it really IS freaky; even infrequent visitors to our home have commented on it.   And the friends who come by to catch a game with the Professor on a regular basis have taken to calling him ‘haunted’.   Since learning of this, I’ve begun to pay attention.

Let me give you a prime example, a couple of months back I was cleaning up in the kitchen when I heard the Professor speaking out loud. He said, “The Preakness is on and I can’t believe that in 145th running of this iconic horse race they will not be playing the State song, Maryland, My Maryland this year.  Thinking myself witty, I called back from the kitchen, “Oh well anyway, they stole that song from the 1824 German Christmas Carol, Oh Tannenbaum.”   Now, you are thinking nothing strange or unnatural about that marital exchange, right?  Well, read on…

Fast forward an hour, dinner is now finished and cleaned up and it is time to join the Professor in front of the tube and catch an episode of Jeopardy. In the first line up of questions Mayim Bialik read the following clue: “Maryland’s state song, Maryland, My Maryland is sung to the tune of what Christmas carol?” We both just stopped dead in our tracks and looked at each other with dropped jaws, I mean…the Professor’s psychic abilities are not just haunted – they apparently are contagious and downright creepy!

I’m booking us a flight to Vegas!