The Horrors of Thanksgiving Football
Thanksgiving is certainly a strange time of year. Except for the fact that we get a week off from school (or most schools do, but ours is miserly and only gave us three days. Talk about a rip-off!) , I wouldn’t call it a holiday, as holidays are supposed to be fun. Thanksgiving, however, isn’t really that great – you have to put up with family, family’s jerky friends that just have to come over every day and inevitably get invited over for dinner, being in great pain from eating way too much, and, of course, the all-around boredom of spending a week in a place where the closest thing to a computer is a mechanical typewriter. And football. And what it does to the male members of your current residence.
Suddenly, without much warning, they are transformed. Even my dad, who, on any day other than Thanksgiving, adamantly professes his hate for the sport, succumbs to this Thanksgiving-football-mania. I walk into the den, intent on watching the Angry Beavers marathon or one of my taped episodes of Daria, and I am confronted with a strange sight. Well, strange to me, at least. Incredibly pointless, too. Well, anyway, the TV shows what is obviously your typical football game – big guys with pea-sized brains in brightly coloured Spandex intent on killing, or at least seriously injuring other big guys with similar brain sizes and outfits, but in different colours (the outfits, not the brains. Though I sort of wonder what colour those are . . . ). Oh, yeah, there’s also a brown, elliptical ball somehow involved, though not involved with the foot, as the game – no, I take that back – the massacre’s name would suggest. Well, I’m getting off the subject, I guess. So, they’re all there – my uncle, cousin, grandpa, and dad – sitting on the couch and various recliners, watching intently and occasionally screaming, “Run big man! Run! Come on! Yes!” or “Unbelievable!” or something to that effect.
I soon realize that my cause is completely futile, as they won’t notice me unless I wait until half-time, when I might be able to go on a secret mission to capture the remote – they’re far above actually getting up to change the channel – or, if I’m really stupid, I might go and stand in front of the TV. However, I’m not that stupid, and I worry that if I do take such drastic measures as passing in front of the TV for one milli-second, they’ll pick me up and throw me out the window, all the while impersonating their heroes by making football grunts and other such noises. Well I might hit the window, but its more probable that I’d end up smashed on the wall somewhere in the vicinity of the window, as they’d undoubtedly still be watching the game over their shoulders. So I must resort to Plan A, and write this article in the mean time.
I recently talked to my friend, Darrah, who confirmed my suspicions about guys, Thanksgiving, and football. Her dad, who is normally a perfectly reasonable person, displays football-mania only at Thanksgiving. Robin told me that her dad does too. So, therefore, I would like to conclude that my initial deduction was correct. There is no hope for males, so they will have to be exterminated. Just kidding. I think . . . You know, that really wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. Well, actually just some of the guys, because some are actually okay. And let's extend that to a lot of girls, too. Well, maybe I’ll tackle that one later.
- Larissa
