Hook 'em Horns!

So, some people have accused me of being a crazed Chargers fan. Having spent time in Austin this week, I say you don’t know for super fans until you visit Longhorn country. It’s as if the city has a little bit of burnt orange splashed all over it. Football in Texas is not a spectator sport, it’s a religion and unless you are the converted, don’t even begin to have a conversation with a Longhorns fan about college football.

Having experienced the fanaticism, it got me thinking about whole populations of a city, state or county being rabidly engaged and invested in a football team. I’ve spoken to some who think that sports fans have just lost their marbles, worshiping blindly at the altar of what at the end of the day is a game. I freely admit that there are weekends during the NFL season where I will spend an entire day, in my pajamas no less, watching back-to-back-to-back games. Does it make me feel like a slovenly pig sometimes? Yes. Do I still plan to do it come late August during pre-season football, hell yes!

I’m certain to morph into the next level of scary fan. Maxwell begins football practice next week. He picked up his equipment yesterday, we’re getting him cleats this weekend and I’ve already bought purple paint to get the kids faces game-day ready come September. OK, so that last bit is a lie but I did contemplate it for a moment.

Send 3 year-olds to Find Osama Bin Laden

I am certain that if could somehow convince my 3-year old twins that Osama Bin Laden is hiding in a cave somewhere with a lifetime supply of Sour Patch Kids, I could drop them into Afghanistan and they would find him. There is something about the persistence and tenacity of children at this age that is fascinating (if not a little scary).

Aidan recently found an old Power Rangers DVD that my mom bought at a garage sale. He asked his brother to play it and he was hooked, watching it over and over and over again. However, now that it’s summer and he has to compete for DVD time, his brother and sisters are tired of watching the same 6 episodes and refuse to play it. So, when we were at Suncoast this weekend and he found a new Power Rangers DVD in the bargain bin, he begged me to buy it for him. I acquiesced and from the time I paid the man at the register until the moment we got home, he kept repeating, “I wanna watch my Power Rangers DVD!”

By the time we had dinner and got settled in for the night, it was too late to play the 10-episode DVD. Aidan had a meltdown, screaming as if I was branding him with a hot iron. Paul promised him we could watch it in the morning. He finally calmed down and went to sleep holding the DVD. Paul and I stayed up that night and watched HBO, joking about how obsessed he was with Power Rangers. At 5:30 the next morning, we heard the pitter patter of little feet and when I opened my eyes, Aidan was waving the DVD in front of my face, “I wanna watch my Power Rangers DVD!” I just hope he applies this level of persistence to other areas of his life.