I Hate Football

Now, from the title of this post, you would think I hate football. You just don't understand. See, I REALLY HATE FOOTBALL!!!!! That might bring across my message a little better. I have actually been know to cry when a football game--that is EVERY game ever played--has gone over its allotted time and caused a program I want to watch NOT to start at its scheduled time. (Don't worry, I am getting MUCH better about this--I haven't acted like that for at least two or three weeks!) I have tried to like the game. For crying out loud, when I was in high school and going with the 'love of my life,' I tried to understand and like the game just to be able to watch with him. Didn't happen.

In trying to understand a little bit more about my aversion to football, I can only come up with two possible reasons for why I don't like it: football was not watched by anyone--that means The Father--in the house while I was growing up and we didn't have a football team in the school I attended.

There was only one television set in the house while I was growing up and NO ONE dictated what was to be watched, but The Father. After all, he worked hard and it was his right to watch whatever he wanted when he relaxed. So, I had a very good education in westerns--'Gunsmoke', 'Have Gun Will Travel', and 'Rawhide' are just some of what we watched. I also got a real good education on a lot of country singers--if it was 'Hee Haw' or any other show that featured country music, it was watched. As for sports, we watched boxing--still a fav of mine--some baseball, and hockey. NEVER did a football game get played on the set. I attribute my love of hockey and boxing to those early, growing up years. ( I think I always wanted to be 'Daddy's girl'--never happened.)

The school district I attended was small. Our graduating class had about 35 people. We went from kindergarten through 5th grade in the school in the town I lived, and went from 6th through 12th in the school 3 miles away. We had a basketball team and a track team. We had a swimming pool--the only high school in the area (at that time) WITH a pool--and I'm not really sure whether there was a swim team or not. We didn't have a tennis team, despite the fact we had tennis courts. (The tennis courts were condemned because of the mine shafts under them--they were becoming hazardous because of the unused shafts beginning to cave in.) The high school hockey team didn't come about till after I had graduated. AND we had no football team--probably the only school in the area without one. For some reason or another, nobody questioned this. We had a trophy case with an old football in it--not sure why it was there--so it was understood that at some point in time there HAD been a team in the school. I believe the last team the school had was in the 1930s or 40s--and it could have been earlier. One time I questioned The Mother about this--she went to the same school--and she told me the reason football was discontinued had to do with a player who died. It is my understanding that this was the direct result of a football injury--whether he died during the game or after, I'm not sure. I have no idea where to go to find the story, either--I looked on the web, but it was no help. (Yoopergirl, maybe YOU would know where to find the answer!) Over the years, I have found it very strange that I never heard of anyone bringing up the possibility of starting a football program at the school again.

If The Father would have been a football nut--and with me wanting to please Daddy--I probably would have become a fan. If the school would have had a team, I would have had to, at the very least, TOLERATE football, because I was in the band and would have had to attend the games. But because neither of those things happened, I guess I will have to stick with hockey. Oh, I am sooooo sad! ;)

GO WINGS!