Looking back on 23-plus years of marriage, it's a little scary to think of all the things that could have gone wrong at the beginning.  Some of this borders on romantic complexity theory – small, seemingly trivial choices and coincidences, on looking back, played a huge part.  I can think of one particular afternoon, in fact, in early winter of 1982, when a delay of five minutes or so could have meant a missed unplanned encounter in the college parking lot and changed my future drastically.  So I tend to be a pretty punctual person.

I can tell you one thing, though – the chances of marriage would have diminished considerably if, back in those days, I'd had the poor taste to be a fan of the Washington Redskins.  Or possibly the Giants.  And don't even talk about Pittsburgh.  My wife was from Texas, and you don't mess with the Dallas Cowboys and plan a future together.

As it turned out, my wife and I had something in common, a shared passion for football and no divisional rivalries to get in the way, and watching games used to be something we enjoyed doing together.  Over the years we fell away from the habit, and now when we do watch we just cheer for the Seahawks and everybody stays friends.

So there was no tension last Saturday night when Seattle met Dallas in the playoffs, except for the inherent stress involved in watching an injured team in a mediocre season try to stay alive.  We even wandered in and out of the room, my wife lying down for a nap during the third quarter and me trying some cooking experiments, but we were there for the big finish.  An easy field goal attempt, a game clock heading south, a season on the line, a fumbled snap, a clutch tackle, another fumble, and, finally, another game to come.

And we both reacted just like in the old days, shouting and scaring the dog, my wife clapping her hands and me thrusting both arms above my head in victory.

Question: Do you think, just in a hypothetical way, that a guy who is a few weeks out from rotator cuff surgery should really be doing arm thrusting?  You can get back to me.

It was this experience, then, a rekindling of some gridiron passion followed by searing pain, that prompted a little reflection on the nature of habit.

Recuperating from shoulder surgery, as minor as mine was, has required taking a new look at what I do and how I do it.  Some of it was easy; I don't regret not being able to lift heavy objects or rebuilding my transmission, just to name two.  Taking it easy has always been something I do pretty well.  And there are plenty of household chores that can be accomplished with less than two fully functional upper extremities.  Cleaning a toilet, for example, can easily be done with one arm (you lose some of the joy, though).

But I've had to change, and I've realized that youth-challenged dogs can be resistant to innovation.

Habit is a defense mechanism.  It quiets the chaos and allows us to discriminate, to make sense out of sensory overload.  Driving the same route to work every day, sleeping on the same side of the bed, and cheering for the home team all eliminate the multitude of choices and allow us to free our minds for more importance endeavors.  Like remembering where we put the bottle of ibuprofen.  Because sometimes a guy really, really needs some ibuprofen.

Changing a habit, though, or starting a new one takes time.  In fact, a very specific amount of time.  Maxwell Maltz, a cosmetic surgeon in the middle part of the 20th century, discovered that the phantom pain some of his amputee patients suffered lasted, remarkably and consistently, 21 days.  Dr. Maltz eventually recognized this as a human constant, the nature of engrams and imprinting and other stuff I don't understand, added in a solid dose of transcendentalism, and published "Psycho-Cybernetics" in 1960, the grandpa of self-help books, among other things establishing that 21-day figure as the standard for changing a habit.
So there seems to be hope for me, and maybe you, too.  Did you make a New Year's resolution?  Are you trying to change a habit, or create a new, healthier one?  You're almost halfway home.  And if you have a slip, just start over again.  It's only three weeks, as compared to the rest of your life.  If I can learn to function with one arm on injured reserve, all things are possible.

And if you do mess up, and someone asks, just grimace a little and say, "It was that darn fumbled snap" and you'll sound all metaphorical and mysterious and no one will give you grief.

Keep the ibuprofen handy, too.