FOOTBALL 10/28/06

I was reading my friend Jeremy's blog entry about football http://blog.jeremycrow4life.com/2006/10/lets-talk-about-sports-baby-volume-2.html#links/
and I had some memories come back. So here they are:

Having grown up as a girl-child in New Jersey, I did indeed attend one football game with my dad. It was on a Sunday and it was the New York Giants. Two guys drinking beer in front of us started a fight and my dad said the teevee cameras probably caught our faces as well as theirs.

Later on, my dad and I spent a winter of Sundays watching football. We watched OJ play before he had become a killer and I believe that the Miami Dolphins won the playoffs that year, or at least had been in them. We always stopped at a small gift shop called Rosendale's first [where I'd been introduced to "The Gospel According to Peanuts" by Charles Schultz really young] and then off to the local Foodtown where we bought two kinds of snacks and soda. Then it was off to the den to watch whatever game was on that week. We had played touch football too with some cousins.

That is not to say that I was athletic. As I was not sports-minded in the least. I bike rode all over my county and liked to walk and horse-back ride alright, and I was a danger on skis, but any sort of physical competition was out for me. I did take tennis lessons one summer and had a good backhand but lacked the speed to really be able to do anything with that. And the gym teacher in my senior year of highschool finally found something to compliment me on-- she said I was a natural at badminton! That was only because I had perfected my "smash" when serving the birdie.

Over at exit 26, I've a friend who likes the Pittsburgh Steelers and around the time that the "Men in Tights" Robin Hood movie came out, she used to talk about watching the men in yellow tights win the championship or the playoffs or whatever it is that football teams do. She seemed to have a genuine affection for them. Her affection for the men in yellow tights was somewhat like my affectation for Don Mattingly in his younger days. I decided to like Don Mattingly cuz a few others in my crew did and that is why I phrased it just now the way I did. He'd been a good all-around baseball player and he was slowing down just before he went to Japan. I had learned to pick up various sports phrases and repeat them back to others in different conversations rather well.

Jer likes the New England Patriots as any decent New Englander would. I know nothing about them except that maybe they are from Boston or someplace like that. I did read some book about being a winner by some football coach and it did inspire me in a bland sort of way-- again, it was a book that someone [an old boss in this case] had suggested that I read. It was about teams and winning and work and stuff and so therefore it was destined to become part of the "management" section of my personal library. Since I've stopped working after my tbi, those books are steadily collecting dust.

Being a team player was never really one of my strong points. I'm not really a maverick either. I suspect that I am a hermit deep down inside my heart of hearts as mostly I do prefer my own company. The world is far too loud, bright, and fast for my liking these days.

I will admit to a certain curiosity about what some of those men might be carrying along in their tights-- especially when I am at the gym [no women-only gyms for me thankyou] watching them on the big-screen teevee-- but I suspect that is beyond the scope of this blog.

sapphoq on life