I don't "get" football, but I do enjoy a good party, so both Jer and I went to Mary Ann's for the Superbowl Sunday night. Since the Gamecocks* weren't playing, we didn't have any personal stake in either team, so we decided to just pick one to root for. Jer noticed the Giants' head coach was the only one on either sideline that sang the national anthem. That was good enough for him so he became a Giants fan for the evening. (I would like to note though that he was wearing a Bengal's jersey.)
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| I think Jer likes the Gamecocks because of the cheerleaders. |
Go Cocks! Jerry insisted that I write that too. The phrase sounds dirty to me, but nobody in South Carolina seems to mind.]
Football is a visual affair, which makes it perfect for mixed company. Talking doesn't disturb the flow of the fun for the fans, so the men watched and the women talked. Occasionally when the guys hollered, we'd look up from our conversations to catch the action. (By "we" I mean everyone else. Personally, I was so clueless that I didn't even figure out which team went with which color uniform until late in the third quarter - and even then I had to ask.)
During a game high point, several of us noticed that something had fallen off one of the guys' shoes onto the wood floor. To protect his personal privacy, we'll just call the shoe's owner 'Dick.' It wasn't a big deal, just something that he'd brought in with him. You know how mud and grass can get stuck in the treads of your tennies and then when it dries a bit, it falls out all over the place? Well, it was kind of like that, just a tiny bit of something on the floor. The women ignored it.
Then Jerry saw it. He doesn't ignore things well and so he started to tease 'Dick' about it. "What ya got going there 'Dick?'" 'Dick' opined that spring had come early and it was probably just tree pollen. As 'Dick' grew more animated watching the game, more stuff fell off his shoe. The larger the pile grew, the more Jerry needled him. "Geez, 'Dick', did you mow your grass today?" The stuff did sort of look like a bunch of wet grass clippings by now.
Our hostess was trying to ignore the whole incident and kept directing us back to the screen but every time I looked at 'Dick,' I noticed that the mess was expanding. The stuff on the floor was darker now, too. Dog poop came to mind, but it didn't smell at all. Big relief to him I'm sure, but now I could see 'Dick' squirming just a bit. Eventually even Jerry must have sensed the poor guy's discomfort, because he quit ribbing him so much. By now there was a small mound of debris underfoot - more specifically, under 'Dick's' foot.
Finally, after that last few exciting seconds of suspense, the game ended. 'Dick' leaned back and crossed his legs. It was then everybody saw the bottom of 'Dick's' foot. Literally. The pile of stuff on the floor wasn't something he'd stepped in, it was chunks of his shoe falling off. Now everyone was howling with laughter! It was soooooooo funny, especially because it had been a running joke the entire evening.
How old do shoes have to be before the rubber degrades enough for the sole to fall apart when you are doing nothing but sitting? As the story unfolded, we learned that 'Dick' has a lot of shoes. (How many? Well, we couldn't pin him down to an exact number but his wife called it a shoe collection.) When he pulled out this particular pair of classics, they were so comfortable that he decided to start wearing them again.
One more time, as it turns out.
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