Another Saturday Night & I Ain't got Nobody

Here I sit, on a boring Saturday night. What's a girl to do? At least tonight I have more than one intermittent TV channel to watch. It rained for two days earlier in the week, and for two days afterward, I had no digital broadcast TV. This is supposed to be an advancement in technology? I never had a problem receiving a picture on the old analogue frequencies, but now I'm very lucky to get a fraction of the channels I used to take for granted. One channel that was coming in and out, was carrying the Washington Redskins National Football League pre-season game against the Baltimore Ravens.

I know that some think girls aren't supposed to like sports, but I have been a Washington Redskins football fan ever since the early 1970's, upon returning from Vietnam. I think that originally, it was part of my feeble attempt to be seen as male by the friends I made, when I was still deep in the closet. Even though I had been a manger on my high school football team, I really didn't know much about the game, when I fell in with some guys my sister had been working with, but as we gathered together week after week to watch the games, I quickly caught on.

The Redskins used to be perennial playoff contenders, under coach, George Allen, and were three time Super Bowl champions under coach Joe Gibbs, but that was a long time ago, and they have been struggling ever since. I still enjoy watching them though. Am I supposed to drop my interest in them, just because I have come out as trans? I never bought into the notion that girls can't possibly like sports. Plenty of girls like to watch all kinds of sports. My own mother called me late last Saturday night to tell me, she had been watching the Redskin's route of the Buffalo Bills. It surprised me to hear her say that, but she said that she has always liked to watch football. And what about all of those girls who love to play soccer, field hockey, softball, etc.? Are they to be dismissed as something less than female? Well, of course not!

I suppose I am not the typical football fan. I hate it when someone violates the rules to gain an advantage. Most guys I've known don't care about that, as long as they don't get caught. I especially hate it, when someone deliberately attempts to hurt an opposing player, in an attempt to take them out of a play, or even worse, out of the game. That was one of the things that made me quit playing sports, when I was younger. I almost became a cripple while playing a supposedly friendly amateur softball game, that meant absolutely nothing. I was playing 1st base, when the guy at the plate hit a ground ball to the shortstop. I placed my left foot against the inside of the bag, and stretched out to receive the shortstop's throw to put the guy out at 1st. The throw got there just before the runner did, but as he crossed the bag, he drove his knee into the outside of my out stretched knee, in a deliberate attempt to injure me. It hurt like hell, and walked off the field, cursing the SOB, and refused to play the rest of the game.

So.....the joy I get out of watching the Redskins' National Football League games, isn't about watching players get hurt. In fact I still cringe when I recall watching Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants, breaking Washington's quarterback, Joe Theismann's leg in half while tackling him decades ago. I'm not exaggerating here. Joe's leg was bent at a most unnatural 90° angle after that play, and even Lawrence Taylor himself, was visibly shaken when he realized what he had done.

Thankfully no broken bones in tonight's game, and unfortunately my beloved Redskins took a thumping, but it is just pre-season, and hopefully they weren't playing to win, but just trying out different schemes. At any rate, the pre-season games are one of the things I love most about late summer. They area a harbinger of my favorite time of year........autumn! After suffering the flames of the inferno called the summer of 2010, I'm ready for fall and maybe a little bit of football!

Here is a song by one of my favorite all time rockers, that best expresses how I feel about all of you!

Well.......unfortunately I just found out, that the evil corporate monolith, Sony, has placed a block on the very best Youtube video recording of Bruce Springsteen's, I Will Not Let You Down, so I will have to find an alternative. No guarantees though, since all of the substitutes are shit in comparison!

Here's one, but it pales in comparison to the Sony recording, as far as fidelity goes. Screw corporations like Sony, that try to take control of everything within their grasp. The evil m***** f******s!




Always yours,
Melissa XX