What Is wrong with wanting to watch some football?

I love football. That came to pass as my family watched football every Sunday. I can remember watching football as far back as the 1970s. My team is and always has been the Pittsburgh Steelers. I chose them because they were piped in each week back home in Indiana (the Colts still resided in Baltimore then), and I loved Terry Bradshaw and the 70s Steel Curtain.

When I moved to Florida, I brought my Steelers banner and hung it in my new apartment. Unfortunately, this area already had a professional football team, and my roommate and I (she a Philadelphia Eagles fan) could only watch on television the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This was during their days of the creamsicle uniforms and even worse their last-place finishing days. We did not, however, give up on our teams. Our allegiance was still active. If the Bucs played the Eagles or Steelers, we rooted for the Eagles or the Steelers.

My husband was okay with my football obsession and understood where I would be on Sundays. Plopped own in front of the television. He usually left me alone and found other things to keep him busy. Each Sunday, I watched the Buccaneers. I was one of the many fans who ran screaming into the night when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl. I broke down and bought myself a Tampa t-shirt. But never once did I cheer for the Buccaneers when they played the Steelers. And never once did I not wear my Steelers shirt in the same week that I wore my Bucs shirt.

I will, and always will be, a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

Last night the Steelers were in the playoffs. I wore my "Go to El" shirt (a reference to Antwan Randle El, a multi-talent for Pittsburgh and an Indiana college boy) and had my terrible towel at my side ready to wave. It was a brutal game to watch. The Steelers played like they hadn't a clue what was happening. I began to worry and started making pacts with the Steelers' God. I paced my living room, and then I swept my living room. I began cleaning my dining room table because sitting still as the time clocked down in regulation with the score tied was not something I could do.

My husband had left. He and the children know me well enough that they cut out to avoid my pacing, screaming, and signature LOUD hand clapping. They think I'm nuts, but they are accepting, and they leave me to my football. In the middle of overtime, my husband called to say he and the girls were at the now-closed mall with a dead car battery.

Are you kidding me? In the middle of overtime of the Steelers game? What was he thinking?

I will admit I did not handle his first phone call well. I told him I was busy, and I may have whined when I did so. I did, however, get back to him with the number of mall security so he could ask them to jump his car. 

By the time he called me back to tell me he was on the road once again, the Steelers had won. I was sobbing, and my legs shaking, and my head was pounding. I could barely talk when I answered the phone. 

Me: "We won. It's okay. We won." 

Looking back on this, I supposed he was expecting, "Are you okay? Did you get security?" 

I heard dead silence. Then--

Tom: "What is wrong with you?"

Nothing! I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and we're moving on to the AFC Championship game. 

Go Steelers!