I’m not gonna lie. I gave the New York Giants very little chance of defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.With that in mind, I turned to St. Jude (my Catholicism only occasionally appears on the Clipboard). You see St. Jude is the Patron Saint of desperate cases.
I said a prayer earlier in the week for the G-Men. Maybe I said a couple. Okay, all right, enough already I SAID NUMEROUS PRAYERS TO ST. JUDE.
Ya feel better now that you dragged that out of me?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are far more important things to pray for: world peace, world hunger, new roof on the house…
I just thought that if for some reason St. Jude thought a Giant victory could comfort someone else in need that I was tight with that decision.
Yeah, I realize that Don Shula and Mercury Morris were probably one of the few who were actually comforted by last night’s result.
Of course I knew full well if St. Jude had something else in mind, I’d have to accept it.
So there I was 90 minutes prior to kick off, standing in the aisles of my local Fortune 500 grocers (yeah, I was there twice yesterday--I said yesterday was the "unofficial holiday") feeling conflicted. I was simultaneously wondering if this is how a lamb feels before being led to slaughter and wanting to yell at the top of my lungs: GO GEEEEEEE-MEN!
20 years ago and a couple of libations, I would have done the latter.
Instead, I quietly made my way to the drink aisle (realized about two hours prior to kickoff that we had invited a few of the daughters’ friends for the game, and we only had pop—soda for those of y’all outside of Western New York—to offer. I liken the consumption of pop to the ingesting of anti-freeze. The only responsible thing to do was to get some juice / sports drinks) and proceeded to the cashier before heading to the pizza shop.
In one of those rare occurrences of life, I was actually early to pick up the pizza. I had been listening to ESPN radio and their pre-game coverage. I started getting butterflies. Yeah, you read that right—I started getting a little anxious.
What if the G-Men came all this way to implode again?
I didn’t know if could handle it, and with the couple extra minutes I had while waiting for the pie, I phoned Evan (some know him as Cleef). He is my oldest living Giant friend—just needed that reassurance that if the Giants went down, I had someone with me. I’m sure Evan is happy that I called him and used the word oldest to describe him.
Of course I’m early and the pizza…er…scratch that…the wings were late. Any chance that I have overcome my inability to hide impatience was dismissed when the kitchen worker came out and said: “Sorry, man I know you’re in a hurry; I can tell.”
I gotta do something about my ‘look’.
Didn’t matter I made it home in time.
In case anyone was wondering Doug Gottelieb was doing an NCAA Hoops show on ESPN radio during the Super Bowl. Any takers as to how many listeners he had?





1 comments Last one added about 1 year ago — Leave a Comment
Anonymous about 1 year ago
Best Philosopher known to man everybody...he honestly didn't miss one thing that night excpet for who actually did win the Eukre game. which i am going to say "it will never be spoken of as long as i'm alive!" and even though i am told by your better half that i shouldn't have ever tasted them...good stuff in the fridge Mr. G. haha
Rich F.
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