That Bowl Thing...

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:         That Bowl Thing...

The picture shown above is a classic helmet-to-helmet sort
of confrontation icon, sort of, seen often in the 
panoply of professional football images...  like!

 It's a kind of ritual.  We all have them, I suppose...  rituals.  Some are pleasant, even delightful, if spent with family and food, laughter and fun.  Some are purely insipid, like having to listen to the tedious droning of a vapid and vacuous politician...   A certain male senator in our state is a prime example, like a leaf blower at full and obnoxious volume when there are no leaves to be blown!   

There's a point to this lament, or complaint or explanatory narrative:  I prefer college football.  I tend not to be among the rabid devotees of the professional variety.  But, on the Sunday that has a great percentage of the populous anchored to their enormous television screens with bibs on to catch dribbles and drooling, chips and dips and other foodstuff droppings owing to a kind of inattentiveness when eyes are focused primarily on giant screens, I join my family for this particular ritualistic mayhem.

SweetHeart makes her famous and delicious chili, an enormous pool of the stuff, a complete dinner in a pot.  I help by cooking the meat that forms an important component of the stew.  And, I open cans and toss the empties into our recycle bin.  The day is so frenzied that sometimes I feel I'll land straight-jacketed in a bin of a different sort.  But, one has to be strong and brave; one is compelled to participate or one may incur various forms of torment.

On the Sunday in question, our family members watched a team called the "Rams" defeat a team known as the "Bengals."  One would think a tiger should be able to defeat and devour a member of the sheep family.  Apparently that's not how it works in the

Wait a minute!  Are these guys supposed to
be pals?  I mean, why isn't the guy on the
left eating the guy on the right??!!!

violent arena of professional football, bets and predictions, team spirit and hearts' desires notwithstanding! 

I suppose it is fitting that we fill large bowls of chili during the contest...  It's that bowl thing....   Continuity, sort of...   I watch pieces of it, the contest, that is, but spend most of my time talking nonsense or interacting with my much-loved children, grandchildren, or wandering around the home of my younger daughter who hosts the ritual annually.   

My eldest grandson is an encyclopedia of films, you know, movies, motion pictures.  We enjoy our conversations, and he reveals names of good films, favored directors and film score composers.  He's quite wonderful, and he actually makes films and scores them himself.  Remarkable talent, he is!

Our younger and also much-loved grandson and his uncle, my beloved son-in-law, spend a bit of preliminary and half-time moments competing in an electronic game we disparagingly term "Hut, Hut, Hut, Doodledy Doo," owing to the strange voice of a

presumed Quarter-of-the-Way Back "artificial intelligence" automaton announcing signals!  (We don't know what the voice really says, but it sounds ike "Doodledy doo..."  Could be some other sort of gibberish?...) 

He, the aforementioned grandson, has a new version of "Hut, Hut..." that he variously identifies as "Madden" or "Hut, Hut... Doodleldy NEW..."  

We enjoy pre-contest stuff, like Charcuterie platters and tasty hors 'doeuvre that both daughters concoct.  For me, these are pleasant diversions, distractions that allow me to remove myself from the pre-game babble, player profiles and re-run snippets of contests past.  I like to wander about, pretending to be interested, seeking other outlets to occupy my brain, such as it is.

And then there's dessert, cookies, ice cream with SweetHeart's homemade chocolate-y fudge-y topping that, when allowed to harden, becomes a delicious fudge, like the kind one might find in a candy shop (or "shoppe," if one prefers that rather overly cute and

fatuous version.).  Other baked goods from time to time, and depending on who decides to bring what!  

Did I mention dog walking?  Another necessary distraction that removes the walkers from the warmth of home and hearth allowing for an aid to digestion.  We all tend to overly consume, all of the comestibles being so delicious!  A good walk helps to re-locate the consumed stuff into different compartments of the belly, or maybe creates more blubber nodules...  Something like that!  

And consider this:  My brother once lived in a suburb of Cincinnati, but he also lived in Milwaukee, Denver, and now Dallas.  I think he has mixed allegiances!  I mean, it's a bit tricky, isn't it?  Bengals, Cowboys, Broncos, Packers??!!  I wonder if his children had a feet ball jersey sewn from fragments of all four team logo designs?!  Perhaps that's a topic for another time...  and another rant!  

Readers may note that the
helmeted rat boy is also 
a bit perplexed...  

(I mean, isn't loyalty supposed to be sort of exclusive?  Confined only to one team, not four?  This is a ponderous concept...  One needs to give this more thought, maybe an essay...  a manifesto?)

 Um...  One more observation:  As a society, we're obsessed with superlatives.  I mean, "Why 'Super'?" Baseball has the World Series.  Maybe play that "last game of the season" in footsball using the best of seven concept.  Oh, I see, them padded combatants, they'd all be dead or near dead by that time!  It's a Big Money thing, isn't it?!  The more hype the big money guys create, the more money they all make.  Yeah, it's a money thing...    

[A Confession:  If I'm being honest, I do enjoy "That Bowl Thing" ritual.  It's a fine reason to gather with family members, even if the giant television screen is a kind of distraction, roaring and chasing us from other more scholarly pursuits, butting and battering our heads and brains with mayhem and chaotic scenes of people knocking one another about, trying to dismember and maim!  (Is that what's meant by, "Heads will Roll...")  Such fun, aina??!!] 

Humbly Submitted, 02-17-2022 by Joel K.