The Emerald Rose

      YES!!! My Boston College Eagles Football Team won yesterday,so they go to the Atlantic Coast Conference title Championship for the second year in a row where they face AGAIN Virginia Tech who just barely beat them last year. YEA!!!! Go “BC”.

      Now let me just recap why I’m feeling better for you. First of all because I’m here writing to you and not in the holding cell at the local Police station awaiting processing for homicide (hopefully with aggravating circumstances mitigating the charge). and of course Secondly because I told my beloved wife to “back off, I’ll be home when the game is over” and I’m still hee to write to you without any visible scars or bruises. But in everyone’s defense it would have all been my fault in any event, they were all conscious actions I took to get to this point, and…..well, …let me take you back to the beginning to explain.

       As I was waiting and writing my blog yesterday, I decided that in order to be safe I would call ahead to “The Pub”, “Buster’s World Famous Oyster Bar & Grille”, just to be sure they had the High Def TV all set up on my teams. (Yesterday was the last (sniff, sniff) day of the “regular” college football season, and traditionally it has been “grudge day”, when the intra-state rivalry games occur, i.e. (Numbers in parents = national ranking of each team) Florida State University(5) vs Florida (State College)(24), Alabama (1) vs Auburn(unranked nationally), Oklahoma State(11) vs Oklahoma (3), Georgia(13) vs Georgia Tech (18) etc. So it’s a HUGE intra-state rivalry and event of huge debauchery for all, which includes bragging rights for the next 365 days, (or until an opposing fan kicks the crap out of you) .Naturally except my outstandingly noble Jesuit trained scholars from Boston College(20) , and an equally intelligent school like Maryland (unranked nationally but nice chaps anyway) part of the “civil” crowd.

       So I call, and “Grandmother”, of the “One Adam twelve,  naked grandmother here” blog fame, I wrote about on August 25th of this year (I don’t know how to make it link here, you’re smart go find it…duh!) answers the phone.

      “Hey Gail, ask Donnie the bartender to please make sure the “BC” vs Maryland game is on the Hi-Def down at the end of the bar where I sit at 2:30 and I’ll take care of him.”

      “OK, wait a minute,….HEY DONNIE………”

      A few minutes later,….”You got it Mr. Guinness, Donnie said he’ll handle it for you.”

      “Thanks Gail, see you this afternoon.”

       Anyway then my wife comes to kiss me goodbye as she gets ready for her weekly shopping pilgrimage for food, deals and whatever. (We decided that I’d just get a video for this evening and relax.)

       “Love you, I’ll be home right after the game honey, have fun shopping.”

       “Don’t be late and don’t get drunk.”

       “OK”

       So she leaves, I do some more stuff, head to my office to reset my computer so I can link to it from home on Monday morning and get my e-mail out of the way before I go in to the office, and head for The Pub, It’s 1:30, and by the time I get the computer set up, go pick up a video for tonight, and get tothe Pub it’ll be 2:20. Great timing.

      So I get there at 2:20pm, there is a seat open with a glass of water with a slice of lemon on it (the bartender will hold your “usual and customary” seat if he knows when you will be there on a busy day, but you “no show” once, …well that “perc” goes away. It also means a better than average tip is expected as well.) So I slide in and start watching the Georgia Georgia Tech game (really close and good with two minutes left to play and three points apart). This girl next to me is obviously a “biker chick” with one of those “bandanna” tops on with nothing under it but skin and a good set of ,….(sorry got carried away for a second). And on the other side of her a big burlydude in all black Harley Davidson stuff with a beard (‘ nuffsaid, no one is gonna mess withher and see daylight again!), on my other side is this obviously business man type with an Orange ball cap on with the Auburn University crest. (Oh, almost forgot the biker chick bandanna top was all Alabama logo stuff. Then things started to go wrong.

      The Georgia game ended, and instead of BC and Maryland up comes the Alabama v Auburn game! I was going to change it, but there is another identical Hi-Def TV right beside it so I figure I’ll let them be happy and watch their game and I’ll flip through the channels and find mine. It’s now 2:35 pm and it’s not on yet,….panic is setting in (to me), meanwhile Alabama begins. I keep flipping and eventually find it on a regular station that looks like it’s a bloody blizzard of snow! (It was not snowing, just a very, very, VERY shitty Channel. If the Alabama game hadn’t already started I’d switch TV’s, but to do it now would mean at the very least a broken arm, flattened nose, and assorted “blunt force traumas to the body”. So I sat and was really getting pissed. I asked the Bartender about it and he said they scooped the TV and it might be dangerous to try and change them,…but I could ask if I wanted. Discretion being the better part of valor, I just went back to watching the “blizzard TV”, I could still make out bodies in maroon and gold shirts(BC) and White shirted (Marylanders).

       Now miss, (what the hell) “bandannateats” start whooping it up major league. She’s got a worse “potty mouth” than most of my friends from the Navy days, a voice that is typical “girlie shrill”, kind of like ten folks doing “fingernails on the blackboard”, and she is already a good two six packsahead of the rest of the bar. Fifteen minutes later she is screaming and yelling at every single thing that happens, good bad or having nothing to do with anything. And making “stupid girlie”comments like “rip the bastards head off”, “break his “f**kin’ legs”, etc. (She was obviously not of the “civil” natured sports aficionadoswe usually have at the Pub.) I turned to the guy beside me and said “I won’t tell if you steal her beer, another couple and she’ll blow lunch all over bothof us.” “He nodded and agreed. Her biker buddy guy was looking around withthat “I’m sorry I didn’t know she was gonna be that bad” kind of a look. (The secret is to “glare” at him, that’s bar speak for “No shit Sherlock!” She comes back from the “ladies room” and starts again with the whoopin’ and hollerin’ and even her biker boyfriend is trying to tell her to quiet down a bit, and she’s not having any of it. “You wanna see whoopin’ it up, Huh? I’ll show you “whoopin’ it up when they score again,…ain’t nobody not gonna know I’m a “Bama mama”. ”

       Finally she got particularly shrill and loud and annoying, and I was losing my hearing in the right ear at that point, and had even lost the concentration on my own “BC” game just trying to watch the Alabama game just to prepare for her next “glass shattering” shrilly outburst and leap. (Oh yeah, she was laeping up on her stool and jumping up in the air screaming) Slowly, ever so slowly I moved my hand to the back of her bar stool, next outbreak and leap and I’m going to pull the damn stool away while she’s in the air, watch her fall and break her ass in twenty places, and I’m not calling “911” for the ambulance, screw it,…just lie there in pain! What goes around comes around!

      So you know I’m seriously pissed. Her biker boyfriend sees me and knows what I’m gonna do, so he tells her sit down, they are cashing out and gonna go back to his place to watch the second half of the game. (Hope he was into screaming jumping psycho sex,….she’d be damn good at that I’d be willing to bet!) So I nodded to him and pulled my hand back off the stool and he acknowledged with a slight nod of the head. He knew she had to leave or be “put down”. She ordered another beer and the bartender pretended he didn’t hear, the half ended, and the commercials began, so “Biker boy” wraps her up and heads for the door. She had driven everyone at the bar away from that end. Sooooo, I deftly grabbed the controller, switched TV’s, found my “BC” game in Hi-Def with only 30 seconds left in the first half, but BC was ahead by 14 points,…THERE IS A GOD!

      So after an hour and a half or this broad’s screaming and yelling, watching a “blizzard TV” , and all the rest of what was wrong gone, I settled back to relax and watch the second half, still pissed that I hadn’t seen the whole first half of the BC game, and only seeling the video tape highlights, but there is still another half to go.

      The picture was perfect, the beer cool and soothing, the crowd a little quieter, and a more “civil class” of fans coming into the bar. So I pushed my luck and put the Florida State University v Florida game on the other TV, and wouldn’t you know,…NO SNOW! The game progressed got a little tighter, 3 point difference, “BC” wins they go to the Championship, they lose the season is over and the only “bowl game” they go to is “the Toilet-Bowl”.

       We are down to less than 5 minutes left the lead is barely holding, Maryland has the ball and is poised to do damage to the lead,….RING,….RING,….RING. “Damn” it’s my cell ringing. “It’s after five o’clock are you ever coming home?” (Guess who! The wife!)

       “Honey the games almost over, I’ll be right along”

       “I found it at home here on the TV, you could have watched it at home.”

       “Honey,…(steam beginning to emerge from ears) I said I’ll be home when the game is over, not before, that’s what I said, are you watching it at home now?”

       “Well yes, and….”

       “Then you and I will both know exactly when it’s over and I will be home within ten minutes thereafter,…end of discussion.”

       “Well, I ,….it’s just that you’ve been down there since two o’clock.”

       “They don’t do IV’s of beer anymore so don;t worry, I’ll see you in a while, Goodbye.”

       And by the time I got home, sober (well a slight buzz, but how “buzzed” can you get holding your hands over your ears for the first hour and a half, leaning back and revelling in a more “peaceful environment” for the other hour and a half, and only three pints!) my wife was all calmed down because I got the movie, opened the garage door before putting the car in, and did not “leak into the house” under the door sill. And most importantly nobody got hit, divorced and no animals were hurt in the making of this entire saga,….well if you don’t count those bandanna chick who will pay her dues tomorrow when she can’t speak, can;t see through the bloodshot eyes, and her head is going to feel like a fully used soccer ball!  Heh, heh, heh,…sorry girlie, couldn’t happen to a nicer person!

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