Gather 'round, Kids. Let Me Tell You a Story

Watch it! Taking shots at me for crimes I haven’t even committed yet? Truth is, I’m sitting in the middle of the pack in both my faeries & unicorns leagues. I need to string together a couple of good weeks before I dazzle everyone with my fake football prowess.

Let’s talk about something important. The game this Sunday in York del Nuevo. Now, bear with me here, cause I’m gonna go all Stephen King and take off on a serious tangent before wrapping this up into a tight little bow of pertinence at the end. It will totally be worth it. I think.

About a million years ago, as a young man of about 20, I was involved in a sordid, Melrose Placeian type of “love” triangle. Now, many who know me might be surprised to find that I was a much more impressive all around person back in the day, and being such, I ended up with the girl in this particular situation. In fact, we ended up in a rather long and, for the most part, deeply committed relationship. Unfortunately, the other gentleman, not knowing that he was ultimately the winner in this situation for dodging that particular bullet, decided that fair retribution would be to throw me down a flight of concrete stairs. When I say throw here, I don’t mean push. I mean he winged me down those stairs like so much paper airplane. A truly humbling experience for me. In retrospect, and even at the time, I realized that my level of participation in the acquisition of the aforementioned lass, and my very literal interpretation of the old axiom “All’s fair in love and war,” more than warranted my assailant’s course of action. I straight up deserved it. What bothered me was that he had brought an accomplice and they were both armed with skateboards, ready to reduce me like a vegetable like state for a very large portion of my future life. Luckily, due to an as yet unmentioned fourth, fifth or whatever party, yours truly escaped not much worse for wear outside of a broken middle finger and a not so fresh feeling. Not long afterwards, I begin to hear that this guy hit the skids pretty hard. Cracked out on amphetamines and all that jazz. I don’t know if this is a result of what happened, but I’m more inclined to believe that since he wasn’t exactly Mensa material, he was headed in that direction anyway. Jump to two months later, and I’m standing in line at the grocery store waiting to purchase a six pack of be- uh, soda. Who’s standing in line right in front of me? If you been paying attention, you’ve probably guessed it. That guy! And let me tell you, the stories were true. Homeboy had dropped 20 or 30 pounds. His eyes were sunk into his skull, and he was a shell of his former self. I start thinking, “Hey, this guy was ready to maim me or worse.” I’m telling you, it would have taken very little effort to exact a little revenge. Seriously, this guy who had chucked me like a rag doll only two months ago, looked me in the eye and turned away scared. I was pretty sure of myself. And then it hit me. This guy did throw me down a flight of stairs. I mean, there was a chance he could go all rabid dog on me and dole out some pain and humiliation right there in front of the Safeway. Ultimately, I decided to walk away, telling myself that I was taking pity on this poor soul. Yep, I’m just like Ghandi that way.

Here’s the deal. The Chargers don’t have the option of walking away from a confrontation with their own dying animal this Sunday. Everyone says the Jets are just a shell of a team. Everyone says their 90 year old QB is a joke. I urge all of you to remember that this lame dog of a team has been throwing us down the stairs for a couple of years now. Hell, last January they dropped us down a frigging elevator shaft. I seem to remember a lot of people, myself included, being pretty confident going into that one. And don’t give me any garbage about those three rushes up the middle and that long field goal miss. We wouldn’t have even had the opportunity to try that if not for a roughing the passer penalty (my least favorite penalty, by the way) on the last play of regulation.

The Jets still have a lot of Pro Bowl type players on that defense, and how many times over the past several years has our pass defense been pure medicine to ailing QBs? This team is not going to just lay down and take it. I mean, we’re still gonna kill ‘em, but…uh…you know.

Just for the record, I heard that guy cleaned himself up and is actually doing all right these days. Isn’t that great? Go Bolts!!!