UC Berkeley felt a shockwave run down its spine during the closing moments of Cal football’s recent game. Although we’re sure everyone has heard about it by now, we’ll give you a quick recap: our sweet, sweet victory seemed to vanish into thin air in the last four seconds of an epic game. Cal was in the lead, until a hail-mary pass — connected through a barrage of football gloves — put the Wildcats ahead, 49-45. Some screamed, some cried and some went into a complete state of shock. The pain should begin to subside soon, and with a few days between us and that horrible outcome, we can safely bank on time to heal our wounds. In the meantime, if you’d like to accelerate the healing process a bit, you can read our list of things you can do to cheer up in the same four-second time frame in which our unfortunate pigskin demise occurred.
1. Breathe in, breathe out
We held our breath through the entirety of the fourth quarter as the Wildcats began to rapidly catch up to us, but now it’s time to respire. Breathing is a vital part of getting over things — it helps you take a second to clear your thoughts, and in pseudomeditative form, it allows you to pause and take a small diaphragm-induced respite from the world. Also, it keeps you alive and whatnot. Pick whichever reason is most appealing.
2. A few jumping jacks
You know you sat completely motionless while you watched the game. You entered a vegetative state so pristine that a local Berkeley food co-op would have taken you in as organic produce. The cure to your new vegetative state? Exercise for four seconds. This will make you do four seconds more exercise than you typically do, will allow you to be four seconds more fit than you were prior to the jumping jacks and will be something new to put on your resume. Here’s to hoping you can get to five, because four solid seconds of physical activity will allow you to appreciate the physical intensity required to play football … which is probably the equivalent of much more than five jumping jacks per game.
3. Tweet about your team’s loss
This is a great way to show everyone how in-the-loop you are. If you tweet about the game, every single person who follows you is forced to acknowledge that you knew exactly what happened. They will then know that you watched the game, providing them with the wonderful illusion that you have a such a well put-together life that you can afford to spend time watching sports. Show people you care — show people you’re somehow doing it all (though you’re actually working on that paper due tomorrow morning, studying for your upcoming barrage of midterms or pounding the refresh button on your ESPN app for score updates). The key to an enjoyable lifestyle is to use social media to adopt the facade of someone who is enjoying himself or herself through every fleeting, tweeting moment of life.
4. Speed date
Wikipedia told us that most people make their choices about potential partners within three seconds. With that kind of shallow, judgmental efficiency, you could speed date 1.33 partners within the allotted time span! By selectively determining who you might enjoy based purely on superficial interactions alone, it’s possible — though probably not likely — that you could find your future partner and forget entirely about the crushing loss we endured in approximately the same amount of time it took you to connect with your newfound love.
It’s amazing what can happen in four seconds or fewer. That’s all the time it takes for radical personal improvement, love at first sight or a devastating football-game loss. At least we get another 3,600 seconds next week, and that’s 900 four-second intervals to put Colorado to shame.
Image sources: Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 4
Contact Uday Suresh at usuresh@dailycal.org.