In which my wife watches football, screams, dances, and her mother mocks me

My wife has never been much of a football fan. She's always been willing to sit and watch if I had it on, but she's never been particularly interested in what was going on. As this season has progressed, though, she's shown increasing interest in keeping up with the players on my fantasy team. She's especially enjoyed watching the Patriots, since their QB (my cousin Tom Brady) is also the QB of my fantasy team. As the season has gone on, she's also started to get more and more into whether the Pats would stay undefeated or not.

This weekend was the end of the NFL regular season. The Patriots were playing the Giants on Saturday night in an effort to go 16-0. Giant WR Plexiglas Burress is on my fantasy team, but my wife's interest was solely in New England going undefeated. Plax was an afterthought.

We were in Maggie Valley visiting her parents this weekend. I turned the game on in their living room at 8:00, expecting her to spend the time chatting with her mom and maybe keeping half an eye or so on the game (and maybe getting onto me for watching football instead of visiting). Instead, as it turns out, her mom spent the evening on the computer playing online games at Pogo, and Darlene and I sat side-by-side on the couch watching the Patriots make history.

I've never seen her more into a football game. She yelled at the officials, taunted Eli Manning, encouraged the Patriots when they needed it and generally stayed involved in the game like a true football fan. It was really cool. It was like watching a Jets game with Welchie, except without the f-bombs and evil cackles.

The best part came when Laurence Maroney scored a touchdown and did some sort of arm-wiggly-flappy dance. She yelled, "Go, butterfly!" She then spent the rest of the game jumping up and doing the same dance whenever the Pats did something good. At one point I hollered at her mom, "Look at Darlene do the touchdown dance!" Her mom looked at her like she was crazy, then turned to her dad and said, "She's been married to Sam too long." Yeah. Like it's all my fault. I didn't raise her.

:::(=====)::: (that's my halo, radiating innocence)

Anyway, she was a little worried when the Pats were down by 12, but I told her, there's plenty of time. After the next Patriot TD, she started predicting the Giant loss with more confidence after every play. When Moss scored on his long bomb, we both screamed like lunatics and the Patriot victory was met with great satisfaction on the couch.

I got to watch football with my wife. She actually enjoyed herself! That's pretty cool.