Rules of the Game

In my house, we watch football. Some of us (um, me) don't actually watch football. What we do is suffer through the background noise of it all the time. All. Weekend. Long. During football season (one-fourth of the year!) all the other things I could be listening to...music, raindrops, the dryer...are all obliterated by that droning noise coming from the TV.

I don't blame my husband for driving me slowly insane. It's not his fault. He was indoctrinated by his father, and his father before him, and his father before him. This is the male way....I get it. Besides, I really do love the guy. And even though our rabbi never mentioned televised sports during our wedding ceremony, I'm sure there was some implied acquiescence about it thrown in somewhere. Probably in the Hebrew I didn't understand.

For my husband's sake, I wish I could be one of those "football fan" women. You know, the ones who sit by their hubby's sides and scream along with them. Sadly for him, no. He ended up with a woman who only likes hockey and baseball. I suppose I have other redeeming qualities that make me lovable to a man who reads football statistics for pleasure.

There IS a glimmer of hope for him in his house of women-folk, though. Catie rather enjoys throwing balls around, and Jaden not only knows what football is, but has become quite curious about it.

Since her father hadn't done so yet, I took it upon myself today to explain the rules of the game to my tw0-year-old daughter...

"Okay, Jaden. See all these guys here? They all have yellow pants. That means they're friends and they play together. Those guys? They have blue pants. They're friends together too, but not with the yellow guys.

The blue guys and the yellow guys don't want to be NICE friends, they just want to jump all over each other and take the ball away. See the brown ball there? It's called a football, but mostly they hold it with their hands. Everybody wants to get the ball, and knock it onto the ground. That's why they jump all over each other.

They wear a hard hat so they don't get too hurt. You can ONLY jump on your friends if they're wearing a hat to protect themselves! Sometimes that man in the zebra clothes has to come in and give them a time-out because they didn't follow the jump around rules."

It would seem that there ARE a few life lessons to be learned from football. Such as, stick with your friends and you'll be okay. And, taking toys away from somebody might get you put in a time-out.

I'll save the intricacies of scoring for another day. In the meantime, I will try to make it through this season without accidentally-on-purpose knocking our TV off the shelf. After all, if I did that, however would I torture my husband with home design shows and Hallmark tear-jerkers?