Obligatory Steelers Post
I have never been so excited about a football game. I wasn't just watching the game for the commercials (as I used to do). I was whooping, I was waving the closest thing I had to a Terrible Towel, I was engrossed in the plays, in the tactics, in the strange mix of strict regulation and raw physicality that is American football. The sheer drama of give-and-take, of ground gained and lost and gained again. And I knew enough of the rules that it actually made some sort of sense to me.
And, of course, the swelling pride of place as I went onto my back porch and listened to this city scream with joy. The feeling of knowing that I'm a part of this now. I've never had anything quite like it in my life.
Seriously, it felt like I was in some alternate dimension when I called up my dad afterward and talked about the plays. Who is this Jen, and where did she come from? Maybe it's something in the Pittsburgh air which has turned me, slowly but surely, into a Steelers fan, a football watcher. Maybe it's that black grit that gathers on the windowsills and anything else left outside to long, and which I have always referred to as "Oakland." Maybe it wasn't just Oakland itself which has been causing my sinusitis. Maybe it's pure distilled Pittsburgh.
And, of course, the swelling pride of place as I went onto my back porch and listened to this city scream with joy. The feeling of knowing that I'm a part of this now. I've never had anything quite like it in my life.
Seriously, it felt like I was in some alternate dimension when I called up my dad afterward and talked about the plays. Who is this Jen, and where did she come from? Maybe it's something in the Pittsburgh air which has turned me, slowly but surely, into a Steelers fan, a football watcher. Maybe it's that black grit that gathers on the windowsills and anything else left outside to long, and which I have always referred to as "Oakland." Maybe it wasn't just Oakland itself which has been causing my sinusitis. Maybe it's pure distilled Pittsburgh.