Saturday Night (or Afternoon) Fever

Something happens to me on Saturday.  On other days I am a mild-mannered wife and mother.  I'm a bookish type who listens to NPR and watches History Channel.  I teach Voice and sing opera.  But not on Saturday.  On Saturday I become a screaming, snarling, crazed fanatic.  Football.

So what's a sci-fi-loving, Italian-art-song-singing, trivia-spouting nerd like me doing watching football?  I blame my dad.  He took me to my first game, a high school game, when I was a kid and I fell in love with football.  I started watching televised games with my dad, and over time learned the ins and outs of the game.  Unfortunately, my dad and I are no longer allowed to watch football together at my parents' house.  My mom seems to think we get too rowdy. 

Now, when I say that I love football I don't mean that I watch with mild interest.  I mean that I watch on the edge of my seat while screaming orders to players, coaches, and refs as if they can hear me.  I don't know what happens to me.  It's like I have some kind of Jekyll and Hyde transformation.  I go from non-confrontational choir girl to rabid, blood-thirsty super fan.  While I normally don't have the heart to smush a spider, on Saturdays I find myself screaming things like, "Crush his skull!" at my teams players.  I cackle with glee when an opposing team's player goes down.  I delight in the tears of grown men after a heartbreaking loss. 

What is it about this game that makes me turn into such a ruthless maniac?  Perhaps it's just the raw violence involved.  I mean, huge grown men are out on the field plowing each other down in order to get a little ball to the opposite end of the field.  They are smashing and crushing and knocking and dragging and pulling and pushing and beating each other senseless. That's not something I would normally be into. I do not advocate violence.  I don't like vicious maulings.

Except on Saturday.  On Saturday vicious maulings are awesome.




*RTR!*