about football

i'm an american but i don't know very much about football.

chalice and i spent the last few days of winter freedom being pummeled to and fro by a great deal of football-related entertainment, namely many episodes of friday night lights on netflix (oh dear) and a trip to see the blind side. so much football. so much violence. so much yelling. so much team spirit. so many confusing rules.

"what does it all MEAN?" we asked ourselves.

we tugged our snuggies tighter and pondered the significance of the sport. (i distinctly recall the first time i saw a snuggie commercial on TV. i laughed heartily at the family sitting on bleachers at an autumn sporting event with their brightly-colored sleeve-blankets protruding from the crowd as i imagine a large pikachu or charlie brown parade balloon might do in the middle of a monday evening traffic jam. no more i laugh at the snuggie. no more.)

after a while we figured, "hey, we've been seeing a lot of this nonsense on the screen. maybe we'll pick it up just by watching. after all, we have a patriotic duty to know the facts about this game." but with all the crazy lingo and fast-paced television editing, we couldn't tell left from right.

we made a list of everything we knew about football:
-touchdowns are great
-tackle the fella with the ball

it was a very short list.

"how to play football," we asked everyone's favorite search engine awkwardly in a sort of non-question. it was a slice of a sentence that was entirely unsure of itself, grammatically confused, answerless, yet holding so much promise. those four words were the confident blue plastic lid on the giant footballian tupperware containing all the answers of the great american pastime. all the black and white stripes of the referees' shirts. all the whistles and shoulder pads. all the baseball caps being plucked on and off coaches' heads in muffled frustration. all the yard lines and yellow flags and mouthpieces and coin tosses. it was all there, a melange of sweaty, bruised, helmeted glory, there for us to pop into the google-microwave and dig into thirty seconds later, mulling slowly over each crunchy bite of football knowledge.

i still don't know very much about football. but i know more than i used to know, and things are looking up. someday i will know it all. someday i'll make it to the NFL. hey, i dream big.

you know, i feel a lil' bit more american.