We Call Football "Soccer"

My cousin Joe who lives in Nap Town said he'd watch the Colts-Bears game but would turn it off if the Colts started to do poorly. Wonder what his reaction was when the Bears ran the game kickoff all the way back for a touchdown? Not even a first down. I was doing things and didn't see the Colts make their first TD but I did see them fail to kick the extra point. Then, next I knew, dah Bearss were up 14-6. Wondered if Joe had given up by then.

Next it was halftime and the Colts were leading 16-14, and the music show was on. (I was very attentive to the dancing girls in their black outfits.) Missed those award-winning commercials they all talk about afterwards. I think the Gene Kelly elephant was one of them last year, and they continued to show it throughout the year. Switched over to Cinema Paradiso on Turner and watched it off and on and last I checked Colts were ahead 29-something, and finally at ten I heard firecrackers outside, which I figured meant the Colts had kept their lead to the end.

Sure enough. Saw and heard the fabled Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning accepting the trophy afterwards. Have little patience with the chatty announcers (axiom: you don't like traits in others you don't like in yourself), find it hard to listen to them while the game is played but can't follow the plays without their explanations so it is an uneasy alliance. Went to an IU football game once long ago and never knew where the ball was. Never fond of a game that made me feel stupid. Watched a pro football game with a once college roommate who always made it a point to make me feel stupid: never again.

Recall playing tackle football without equipment when I was about thirteen, fourteen and, miraculously, wasn't hurt -- I do recall a clothesline tackle by a gangly gorilla -- that's catching me by the chin from behind, stopping its motion entirely but having my feet fly out in front of me and gravity doing the rest.

I suppose that was comical to see, the kind of stuff that Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton were geniuses for, although I don't remember anyone laughing, including the tackler, and I recall my friend Pee Wee counseling me that yes, it's a rough game, and the tackle was fair, and I just needed to go on with the game. And by golly, I did.

The gorilla -- I'll call him Yogi Yates -- actually had an insidious-onset, degenerative neural disease similar to Huntington's chorea that caused him to gradually lose his coordination and finally took his life. At that stage of early adolescence he was strong, one of the better baseball hitters, and hard to stop when he was running in a base path or down a football field.

Yogi joined the Navy and was soon discharged when his affliction was discovered, and he spent the rest of his ambulatory days trying to get a girl -- any girl -- to pay attention to him, and then he died young. He was amiable and I had no malice toward him for that tackle. May he r.i.p.

I never cared for "touch football" but I liked the tackle games we played Sunday afternoons on the long rectangular yard that was part of the property of the water-pumping station for the insane asylum on the hilltop and the house of the station's caretaker. Seems that man, with thinning sandy hair, wire-rimmed glasses and khaki twill uniform, was congenial enough and took no issue with a bunch of rowdy, scuffling, potty-mouthed boys spending a couple of hours on that lawn on those autumn and winter afternoons.

Didn't see much of him or the missus, with her tightly permed, gray-tinged hair, spectacles, in her no-nonsense print housedress, black lace-up oxfords and white ankle socks. They probably watched Omnibus or whatever was on TV on those certain-slant-of-light days and didn't mind the good-natured donnybrook outside.

Or maybe they enjoyed hearing it, as I enjoy hearing the Franks Drive Irregulars on their bikes, trikes, skateboards, jumping on trampolines. And yelling, always yelling. Their hollering -- and in the case of the girls, shrieking -- is always as welcome as sweet birdsong.