It’s absolutely beautiful outside. The temperature has dropped, the sun is shining, there isn’t a cloud in the sky and there’s a lovely fall-is-coming breeze wafting through the room.
I’m so depressed.
For many this merely signals the coming of fall, but for me it heralds the approach of Football Season. Which means that for the next several months, the closest thing I will get to affection from my live-in boyfriend is a look of vague recognition on the rare occasions we see each other around the house.
Women, sing with me of conversations tuned out, houses littered with beer bottles, and our inability to concentrate on anything on Sundays because the air is so often pierced with random gunshot-like explosions of alternating fury and joy aimed at the television.
Sometime around Labor Day my otherwise mild-mannered boyfriend turns into a one-track-minded frenetic football freak. His hair stands on end, his eyes bug out, and you never know when he’ll burst into angry discourse. Something he reads in a magazine, sees on television, hears about in an IM conversation will trigger a sudden torrent of furious obscenities as if somebody has just offended his mother in the most vulgar manner possible. “WHAT!? OH COME ON! THIS IS BULLSHIT!” he’ll scream to one of a various number of screens, interrupting an otherwise peaceful night, sending the dog and myself into terrorized heart convulsions.
And it’s not just limited to Sundays and Monday nights, however much they try to convince us of this. “Just two days a week,” they’ll say in a firm yet whiney voice, implying that we are being so unbelievably and unreasonably demanding of their time we may as well suggest a straight-jacket-for-two. But we know that is a load of crap. Yes, the games may be limited to those two days, but the dissertations on what happened, what is going to happen, and what should happen or should have happened takes place around the clock.
There are several ways we women can deal with this. The first and most obvious is to spend every Sunday shopping, but by mid-October the creditors beating down the door are more intrusive than the football-related emotive eruptions spewing Exorcist-like from the person hazily resembling, but no longer recognizable as, our significant others. The second is to give in to the pleads of “Come on, honey, just try to understand the game. If you did, you might just enjoy it!” Another condescending implication of which I am fond – that my inability to enjoy a bunch of men slamming into each other for three and a half hour stretches indicates some flaw in my character.
Every year I try anew to “understand,” by joining the boyfriend on the couch and, with a heavy sigh, listen to him explain, again, about 10 yards and fourth downs until my ears may not be bleeding, but I wish they were, because then at least something interesting would be happening.
It’s no use. I will never find this game stimulating. But I haven’t given up hope that I can still somehow insinuate myself into his fall schedule without having to memorize the definition of a pass reception. After all, there’s always half time, and I have one more trick up my sleeve involving a Cheerleader costume and a bathtub full of beer. One way or another, I am determined to win his attention back from this bunch of IQ-challenged muscle men intent on destroying each other over a piece of pigskin in the shape of a giant suppository. Or at least remind him that I still live here. I mean, come ON! THIS IS BULLSHIT!
