The Saturday After Black Friday
The Saturday After Black Friday
Punts and Pastimes
Saturday, November 27, 2021
Football Globes
Michigan finally beat Ohio State. But the most important thing is, it snowed.
Michigan State beat Penn State. But we care more because it snowed.
“The degree to which you enjoy football,” Annalee Birdcount writes in her journal, “is often commensurate to how much it snows during the game.”
It didn’t snow for Georgia-Georgia Tech, Notre Dame-Stanford, Illinois-Northwestern, or Alabama-Auburn and they were all still great, Annalee knows, but snow would have helped.
She scribbles more in her journal, “all college bowl games and the Super Bowl should be played in the snow. But they never are, never are, never are…”
Annalee takes a sip of wine and tells her sister to adjust the angel atop the Christmas Tree. “It’s crooked, sweetie. All sorts of crooked.”
Willow frowns and puts the angel on better footing. Annalee takes her wine outside and finds the old football, the one the dog chewed up, caked in mud near the garage. She tries a drop kick but misses and drops her wine and it spills everywhere. She looks up and sees Willow watching her from the family room.
Annalee picks up the football and leaves the wine glass and tries to punt again, this time aiming for the one star that has emerged in the November blue, like a rebel snowflake unsure of what it supposed to do next. --TK
Saturday, November 27, 2021