Forgive me, East Texans, for I am a big-city girl at heart.
And I hate football.
I have tried for years - nay, decades - to play down my distaste for this particular sport. I was a fairweather fan, after all, when the Cowboys won back-to-back Super Bowls and were going for a Threepeat. I became a fairweather fan again, years later, just in time to drive to Nacogdoches to watch the Gilmer Buckeyes win state. Just last year, I happily sang "When the Saints Go Marching In" the morning of Super Bowl Sunday.
But really? I spend much more time being annoyed by "East Texas Football Fever" and High School Football TV shows, and even by the few minutes that sports occupy at the end of evening newscasts. And just imagine my outrage when our local Fox affiliate - that's you Fox 51! - had the audacity to air a pre-game show, followed by a pre-season football game instead of the scheduled "So You Think You Can Dance" season finale. That, dear readers, was a grave offense I'll not soon forget.
And it's just helped me reach this final conclusion: I don't just dislike football. I don't just want to have other options of shows to watch on a Sunday afternoon or Monday evening. It's more than a flippant rolling of the eyes at the fact that Albertson's sells football jerseys. It's a persistently bad taste in my mouth. It's that unidentifiable, slightly stale odor in my house that I can't track down. It's my cat Jack, who pathologically moves from carpet to tile, hacks up hairballs, then moves back to tile, making clean-up that much more... icky.
Why share, you ask? Because, East Texans, should my sons reside here long enough for a Little League or Junior High Football coach to catch sight of their height and girth, the broadness of their shoulders, the quickness of their movements as they run from their parents or their peers, my boys will almost certainly play ball. So I'd better share my feelings of detached gag-me-ness now. For the time will come when I can hate football no longer, and I'll have to embrace the beast.
And don't even get me started on hunting. When a kid in my class wrote about going to a deer lease, I thought surely he'd misspelled the word he intended to use instead of "lease." And I gave my students the laugh of the year when I assumed a game warden was a referee...
6 comments:
I (somewhat) understand, though being a big-city girl, I can't understand the "small town" appeal of football, which I know is quite different from here. I have actually come around on football a little bit, though. It all started when I finally learned what a "1st down" is. Understanding = tolerance for me in the case of football.
P.S. I bought one of those jerseys at Albertson's. :/
Umm.. what they call hunting here in East Texas is the equivalent of putting food out for your dog and shooting it. Hunting means you go after your prey, not wait for it in a nice ac/heated hunting unit while the animals come out to eat the only food provided for them within the confines of the fence.
Not all hunters in East Texas use bait.
I love football, but not to the extent the town in which we both worked. And your kids may not even like hunting. See there is hope!
I bet you don't like football because it's traditionally a man sport. Which is why you should check out the Dallas Diamonds. That's the women's team. They play in the spring. Good stuff.
I feel for you! The only sport I even marginally follow is soccer, and that's mostly because it's inescapable here. I'm with Jessica, though -- understanding the game makes enthusiasm that much easier to come by, so if your boys ever join a team, I bet you'll be cheering with the rest of the proud mamas!
that last paragraph has my rolling on he floor laughing
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