Hellllloooo! It’s Friday. Can I get a Thank God?! Not that this has really been a terribly long week – I had ice days on Tuesday and half of Wednesday, so I feel badly complaining. But yesterday was just draining. All of my least favorite people were at ThePlaceThatShallNotBeDiscussed. Well. Not all of them. I guess there are few things to be grateful for. Still, it was a very long, drawn out day full of boring and tedious and for-the-love-of-god moments. Plus, I don’t know if you heard, but I lost an earring, guys. It was very tragic. (Until I found it. And lost it again. And then found it. See? Tiring.)
Anyway. To help ease the pain of sliding into SuperBowl Weekend (woot!), I bring you…a meme about football! Wow, who saw that coming? Please note that Friday5 is kind enough to explain (in brief) the football term in question. I didn’t alter that part of the question. If you think it’s brilliant, thank him here. If not, dude, not my fault.
A fumble occurs when the player carrying the ball drops it, often resulting in a great advantage for the other team. What have you recently fumbled in your own life? I’m pretty sure I fumbled the extra child support in the divorce settlement. I’m getting a teeny tiny bit extra now, but hardly so. It’s in the margin of error. At one point, I had negotiated a much higher percentage, and then let the settlement drag on and on…and on and on…and on…because I didn’t want to be the bad guy. I already felt (and still feel) a lot of guilt for calling his bluff and having to be the one to say out loud that our marriage was over. After a long, painful year, I just didn’t have it in me to call his hand again and turn a relatively peaceful (but drawn out) divorce into a bitter and bloody deathcage match. So I coughed up the football and it cost me some points. Meh. I’ll get the ball back and rebound in the second quarter.
In football, you have thrown an interception when someone from the other team catches the ball you meant for your teammate. Who’s often an interceptor of something you intend for someone else? I don’t know that I can really name anyone. I don’t have an arch-nemesis (thank GOD, my life is dramatic enough). I don’t think someone has something or is living a life meant for me. I think I am exactly where I’m meant to be in this life. If I interpret the question another way, you could say that my sister often reads my mind, whether I intend for her to catch my drift or not. (Usually, though, I’m trying to send devious thoughts her way to be purposely intercepted.) And back in high school I knew someone who could intercept my thoughts before I had even written them into a note for my friend across the table. He’d call me on it every time, too.
One of the most severe penalties in football is for unsportsmanlike conduct, when a player doesn’t act according to the spirit of fair play. In what situations are you most likely to be a perpetrator of unsportsmanlike conduct? If you double cross me, I have an acid tongue. Seriously. They would give me 15 yards, a touchdown, and take away a draft pick. I take loyalty very seriously. You turn against me, my friends, or my football team and you are dead to me. There are people from my high school I would step over if they were lying in the middle of the road. I danced a little jig when the last Manning brother was eliminated from the playoffs. When interviewing potential dates, “Are you a Yankees fan?” would come before “Are you a smoker?” And I don’t date smokers. It’s not business, it’s personal. Double-crossing makes my New Englander blood run cold…and my temper rather hot. Also? It seems to inspire my dramatic streak. Go figure.
In football, the concept of running low-risk plays that consistently gain a few yards at a time is called “moving the chains,” while the concept of going after huge gains with higher-risk plays is called the “vertical game.” In your personal life, are you more of a moving-the-chains player or a vertical-game player? I’d say I’m more of a Wes Welker kinda guy. I’m your go-to-gal. You need me to catch the ball on 4th down? I’ll do it. Even though everyone knows you’re gonna through it my way. Pitch and catch. Pitch and catch. I might not be your flashiest player, but I can bust a move and add the glitz and glamour every once in a while. Just to keep it interesting. Oh, okay, if you make me choose one of the listed answer, I follow a ‘move the chains’ kinda game plan. But how much fun is that answer?
Sometimes in American football, the quarterback will, at the last moment, change his or her mind about the intended play, either to prevent what is likely to be a failure or to take advantage of a vulnerability in the other team. The method used in this play-change is often “calling an audible.” In what way have you recently called an audible in your life? My divorce. I never intended for it to happen. It wasn’t in the game plan. But the entire game was almost a total loss and I had to do something to keep me in there, to give me (and the girls, my teammates) a chance. Calling a time-out and then game-over on my marriage wasn’t the game plan I wanted to follow. But it’s what needed to be done for any of us to have a chance at being happy. I saw our chance, and grabbed it. Somehow, deep down, I knew that if I didn’t call the audible right then at that very moment, my chance would go by and I would never have the guts to do it later. This game’s a close one; I have no idea how it’s going to ultimately play out.
There you have it. Analogy-riddled answers for your (sort-of) Super-Friday amusement. Now go root for the Cardinals so I don’t have to hunt you down and kill you for rooting for the other team, our AFC rivals. Go CARDS! (Just typing it, still sounds so wrong.)
January 30, 2009 at 11:13 am |
Hey, thanks for participating this week! You really know how to take a metaphor and run with it! I was hoping someone would, but you really outdid any expectations I might have had, and I know this week’s questions were something of a reach (not to mention a screaming bore to non-fans, I’m guessing). Thanks for sharing such thoughtful responses.
PS: How can an AFC fan root for the team representing the inferior conference? If you’re a Pats fan, I’d think you’d root for any AFC team except maybe the Jets in the big game. I root for the Silver and Black (why yes…it HAS been a long decade, thank you very much) and pretty much cheer on any AFC team in the Super Bowl except the Broncos. Not that those losers will ever get there again!
January 31, 2009 at 2:46 pm |
hahahhahaha i would pay money for a pic of kims face trying to read this! =0]