Fantasy Life

In my mind, when I fell in love with a guy who loves sports, I never really thought about the implications and side effects. In my mind, I saw our perfect family spending long weekends and evenings together. Our house would be clean and our garden would be pristine. Our children would help us pick up and always be on their best behavior. We would always sit down to eat meals together. We would be like a spread in one of those magazines. What was I thinking! I guess I’ll blame it on blind love. What I imagined was my fantasy life.

 

A and L at a baseball game this summer

In reality, during the Season, my house is clean about half the time (and that is being generous!). I rarely see my husband on Monday or Friday evenings and the other 3 weekdays he arrives home late from yet another practice that ran long. Saturday and Sunday we plan to pick up and clean the house, but after we get done chasing the future running back and his two cheerleaders around, we are too tired to clean up the 3-kid tornado storm that went through. We eat about two meals together a week and usually only one of them is frozen pizza or chicken nuggets! As far as the magazine spread goes… maybe we could pose for the “before” picture…

Coach and T at the baseball game 

 This past week, Coach was gone every weeknight for some sports-related activity, besides being absent for practice. Late August welcomes not only the arrival of REGULAR football season, but the arrival of “Fantasy Football” season as well. Coach is on three Fantasy football leagues and he has to take time out for his “drafts” each year. I’ve seen a quote that is something like, “Fantasy football… like Dungeons and Dragons for jocks.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. If you even try to talk to those guys during their oh-so-important “drafts”, you might as well be talking to the water cooler for the response you get. He spends a couple hundred dollars to enter all the leagues, then him and his Dungeons-and-Dragons-esque jock friends spend the entire season “following” their players and managing their team, making trades and seeing who wins big each week. They get to escape their lives for a couple minutes each day (and a couple hours at the end of August for drafts) following their fantasy team.

So although Coach is probably gone long enough just for football games and practices, and puts in extra hours at home beyond what he does at the field, I think these fantasy leagues are important. He gets to build camaraderie with his fellow sports-enthusiast friends and coaches and escape our crazy life for a few minutes. Probably, if I put the kibosh on the fantasy game-playing, Coach would go crazy himself. Everyone needs an outlet, right? So next time he mentions having to “check on his league” or says, “I have to watch the Redskins game because I have four of their guys on my team”, I’ll just try to keep my snide remarks to myself and roll my eyes AFTER I turn around. 

And so it begins…

It’s here! … the much-anticipated off-season. Actually was here about 3 months ago, but I’ve been pretty busy since then. We have since welcomed a beautiful little boy into our family. If I thought Coach was crazy trying to get our daughters interested in football, I had a whole other thing coming when our son was born! Although, Coach has the daughters trained pretty well already; the other day I heard them arguing in their bedroom and the dialogue went something like this:

                L: “Go Broncos!”

                A: “Go Lions!”

                L: “I like the orange Broncos!”

                A: “I’m on dad’s team!”

Although football season has been over for high school for over two months, the same cannot be said for college and pro football… and my husband. To him, football season lasts six months. Half the year! He watches his favorite football teams and follows them closely, living vicariously through the players in his “fantasy leagues” (yes, that is PLURAL) and spending countless hours analyzing which players do what and making trades accordingly. Just when I thought I’d have my husband back… and now that football is (REALLY!) almost over, spring ball starts, along with the pro football draft. And then there’s basketball season, when he’s watching the Lions on one channel, he has another football game on the alternate channel and the UNC Tarheels on standby. So, in other words, it never ends.

Already a UNC Fan!

And if it’s not bad enough with just my husband, my wonderful father comes over, encouraging this disagreeable behavior with a six-pack and a smile. They spend hours on Sundays parked downstairs in front of our big-screen, watching the games. I love that they get to spend that time together and at least my husband folds laundry while they’re watching. I guess I should call myself lucky!

My dad (aka. "Bumpa") egging T on already!

 But here’s the real icing on the cake. A few weeks ago (my newborn son was about three weeks old at the time, and barely able to see 6 inches in front of his face) my husband comes up, grabs the football-fanatic-in-training and says, “We’re going downstairs to watch the game.” It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. “You know he doesn’t even know what’s going on, right?” I said. “He will someday!” was Coach’s response. And so it begins… someday I’m sure that I will be rolling my eyes as my husband, father AND son traipse downstairs to watch one of a million games!

T in the same Assistant Coach t-shirt his sisters owned

I wish that just once, when I turned on the TV or radio, there was NOT a sports program on. I (sadly) have the channel for each sports station memorized. But I guess, in the big scheme of things, I should count myself lucky. My dad gets to enjoy sports with the son he never had, my husband gets to spend quality time with my dad and he is pruning our son to be a sports fanatic, just like him so that someday they can enjoy the games together. I’m excited to see our son grow into sports fan, just like his dad. I have even found myself enjoying the occasional game this season! Just don’t tell my husband. J