Valentine’s day: I was at the Target Center in Minneapolis for a Timberwolves game against the slumping Seattle Supersonics. We got better-than-usual seats in a package deal that included a $30 gift card to a fancy pretend-italian restaurant whose chef must have just moved up from Denny’s or Perkins.

We sat right above the tunnel where the players come out (this is also where the cheerleaders sit and undulate pseudo-sexually). The whole goal of going to a Timberwolves game, of course, is to touch or in some way attract Kevin Garnett’s attention as he walks on and off the court. Unfortunately the man is very intense and either didn’t notice or ignored my hoarse screaming.

I suppose if I were him I wouldn’t be that interested in making brief personal connections with random people I’ll never see again.

At the end of the game (we won) he walked into the tunnel with his head down and didn’t even flinch when people reached out and brushed their hands on his shoulders. How many times did this happen before it became unexciting for him? And when did it stop being weird as hell?

If I walked down the hallway at work and people reached out and put their germy, unwashed hands all over me, I’d probably collapse into the fetal position and cover my head with my hands.

Other players, either because of their relative un-stardom or because they were in better moods, seemed a lot more interested in this whole fan-player tunnel-touching ritual. Ricky Davis high-fived every kid who lined the entrance. Eddie Griffin pretended to remember this (crazy?) trashy lady who claimed she met him at “the club” (is there only one?). This acknowledgment caused her to declare, definitively, that he wasn’t an asshole.

Mark Madsen was the best, because he looked right at me and pointed when I yelled “Mad Dawg!” in that suburban-high-school-jock-voice I sometimes do. Maddy (sorry, that’s what my friends and I call you), if you read this, could you please put a link up on your always-entertaining-and-adorably-sincere-blog? Or, even better (and I know this is asking a lot) could you maybe come out a little early before the next game, turn to the stands and yell “B-DAWG!”?

I can assure you I will not find it weird or off-putting.

As long as you don’t try to touch me.

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