Attention! We interrupt your family life to welcome you to the football season. Yes, sir. It’s time to fluff the couch cushions, launder the Snuggies and dig out those trusty No. 1 foam fingers.
Time to stock up on chips and dip and ask ourselves the all-too-pertinent question: “Is one over-sized plastic football bowl enough?”
That’s right, sports fans. Pull out your garb, batten down the hatches and keep in mind — those jalapeno poppers aren’t going to pop themselves!
For the next six months, my family will live and breathe the game. It will be on the TV and the radio, and when a game isn’t on, you can rest assured that someone somewhere will be talking about it and my family of males will do their all-out best to make the time to listen.
Football will certainly dominate the dinner conversations. Take last night for instance. When I sat down to the table with my ever-hungry men, offering up some food: “Aren’t these green beans the best? They’re fresh picked from Sherry’s garden and …” “Is there a football game on tonight?” someone said without even realizing he was interrupting. “No,” another family member responded and then went into detail about what games would be played and how we could go about planning the rest of the month. Isn’t that just something? Seriously, how could they not take the time to appreciate Sherry’s green beans? Football seasons have been quite an adaptation for me. Believe it or not, there was a time when I failed to see their importance. Incredible as it may seem, I never gave the game much thought before I met my beloved spouse. Until then, sports were just something that the men did while the women shopped.
There was a time when I thought illegal motions were confined to a court of law and that “picked off” was what happened to the lint on your shirt.
Back in the day, I couldn’t follow the ball once the play was snapped into action, much less decipher what the next guy did with it, or what infractions occurred as attempts were made to hand it off to someone else.
But I saw the plays begin to develop once our family began to grow. With the birth of each new son, the house filled with more football jerseys, cute little helmets and mouth guards than you could throw a flag at.
It was a tough ball to field for a woman who had no idea what a first down was, much less an offside kick. (Or is it an onside kick? Outside kick? Oh, you know what I mean.)
Worse yet, it’s hard for a woman like myself to observe football for hours on end when I have no idea what’s going on.
There are encroachments, infractions, and men who like to shout at the TV and then turn to me and ask, “Did you see that clip?”
“Yes!” I generally exclaim. Then, as I have learned to do, I ask, “Where’s the stinking flag?”
I’m not sure I’d know a clip if I saw one. It looks to me like plenty of men are clipping each other with nary a flag and since folks have grown weary explaining the penalty to me, I have learned not to call it unless they call it first and then act just as frustrated as they are.
Even though I don’t understand football, I’ve decided that if you can’t beat them, join them. So join them I did. I’ve come a long way, baby. In fact, while recently sitting at a high school football game, I thought to myself, “Gosh, it’s too bad that kid was holding our player, otherwise he would have made an amazing tackle!” Then it dawned on me.
“Holding!” I exclaimed as I came to my feet. “That guy was holding!” And when the referee threw the flag and whistles blew, I couldn’t help but feel proud as my good friend Kandi patted me on the back and said, “You’re awesome, Lori.”
I believe that I even blushed a little with pride as I replied, “I know.”
I’m getting closer to getting the football fever all the time. Now if I could just find someone to pop those poppers for me.
Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of “Are We There Yet?” Reach her at [email protected].
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