Halftime

I just finished eating my ceremonial Primanti Brothers-style sandwich—melted provolone and swiss cheeses with cole slaw, thousand islands dressing, and French fries in the middle—and it seemed to help, because just as I was laying a trio of them out on the coffee table, the Steelers scored their first offensive touchdown of the game to go up 14-10 at intermission, but, of course, I’m still nervous, although that could be a function of not having had a sufficient number of Rolling Rocks, and it makes me wonder, as I always do when watching football games I care about, whether it’s worth it, which is to say whether this is really fun, or if it’s just too painful and agonizing from start to finish.

I’m reading Nick Hornby’s memoir of being a soccer fan, Fever Pitch, and he talks about essentially the same thing, reminiscing about how useless he was as a kid on days his favorite team, Arsenal, were playing. I hope I’m not quite such a spazz—I’ve been able to do some work and take care of my usual gameday chores, but I do have to admit that this level of obsession is pretty silly, especially for a man of my advanced years and level of education, but fuck it. As far as obsessions go, this one seems pretty benign, especially since I’ve still been able to restrain myself when it comes to purchasing officially-licensed Steelers’ t-shirts, sweatpants, and bobblehead dolls.

The only thing I really regret in regard to all of this is that back in the day, in the wake of my father’s death, that I didn’t take the opportunity to hold onto his season’s tickets. At that point, I would have had to pay something like three thousand bucks for the seat license to Heinz Field, which seemed excessive at the time, but given that these days people sell them for like sixty grand, sure would buy lots of bobbleheads.