Tough to make adult choice

I remember the day Sarah told me she loved me.

She nzever actually said it, but she showed it. She called, said she wanted to spend the afternoon with me, and she’d just have to record “Days of Our Lives.”

Recording means you’re making the adult choice, whether that choice is work or another person. Monday’s choice was work. The “I’ll watch it later” was the series finale of “24,” a show that would have garnered the same attention as Sunday’s “Lost” finale had show creators not tried to milk Kiefer Sutherland’s cash cow for three more years.

I still remember a few years ago when the Dallas Cowboys were facing the Seattle Seahawks, and my Cowboy fan friend — we’ll call him Ricky — couldn’t watch the game live. Every time he retold the story, he found a new fold in his troubles to not discover the Cowboys lost because Tony Romo fumbled a snap on a potential game-winning field goal attempt.

When he got home, he turned on the TV, which was already tuned to ESPN. He saw the Dallas field goal unit in a highlight, but tuned out before seeing that the Cowboys lost because Tony Romo fumbled a snap on a potential game-winning field goal attempt.

Still, he knew a field goal played a pivotal role. So he was disappointed watching it, then devastated when his DVR showed that the Cowboys lost because Tony Romo fumbled a snap on a potential game-winning field goal attempt.

But Sarah missed a soap opera in 1998, and Ricky missed a Cowboys game in 2007. I imagine it would be more difficult in 2010 to avoid updates.

Somebody would have posted on Facebook, Twitter or Myspace that the Cowboys lost because Tony Romo fumbled a snap on a potential game-winning field goal attempt. (Sorry — as a 49ers fan, I could type, “The Cowboys lost because Tony Romo fumbled a snap on a potential game-winning field goal attempt” 100 times and still enjoy typing it the 101st.)

My excuse is work. My shift normally ends well ahead of the start time for “24,” but the two-hour series finale started an hour earlier than the normal hour-long episode airs. I stupidly did not set my VCR or DVR to record, figuring I could just watch the online version on Fox’s website.

The result: I was waiting for the episode on Fox’s schedule, and they’re not going to post something online before the show airs in some other time zone.

To avoid “24” talk in the interim, I flipped between the Celtics-Magic game on ESPN and whatever program was showing on Comedy Central. These were two networks that had no interest in Jack Bauer, or telling me about what happened.

I didn’t have to ask, “Did Jack blow the lid on President Taylor’s coverup?” Instead, I was asking, “That guy in the Taco Bell ad ... what TV show was he on?” And my Internet wasn’t flooded with “24” spoilers, because I was Googling “Taco Bell commercial” and discovering people in fast food commercials are more attractive than people in fast food restaurants.

As of filing this column, I still haven’t seen the finale, and I’ve avoided spoilers. I should be able to conclude that I’ve succeeded with the adult choice.

But the adult choice doesn’t mean I’m not petty and vindictive. Did I mention that in 2007, the Cowboys lost because Tony Romo fumbled a snap on a potential game-winning field goal attempt?