Yesterday, we finished our flag football season, finally. I had the pleasure of taking not one but two members of the team to the GW emergency room. In the first game, on the last play, they had 4th and goal, eight seconds to go. The play before, my wife had been bumped in the head, and she was a little ticked off. They snap the ball as she’s leaning over the line, ready to rip someone’s head off. She pressures the quarterback, he throws it up, we knock it down, and we have our second win of the season, 12-7, over the 4th seed in the playoffs. Our only other win was against a team playing short a player because they only had two girls, and you need three on the field at all times.
So, in our celebration, we didn’t notice at first that my wife was on the ground. Did any of you see Carson Palmer in the playoffs last year, when he got hit on the side of his leg and tore up his knee? Well, that’s what happened here. It doesn’t look like it will be that bad. She’s on the couch icing it right now, and we’ll go to an orthopedist later this week if it doesn’t get better.
She was sitting on the sideline, elevating her knee, as we played our second game (Rescheduled due to rainout), and it didn’t go so well. They went up 7-0 pretty quickly. On the ensuing kickoff, “Picnic” got run over by this gigantic meathead. You know the type of guy who comes to a game when it’s 27 degrees out in shorts, with the sleeves ripped off his shirt, with “MAXIMUS” or something written on his arms? Wearing a leather rugby helmet? Yeah, that kind of guy. The one who is way too intense for co-ed flag football. Anyway, he ran into Picnic on the kickoff, and Picnic came off the field. He had his hat pulled down to his brow, but there was a little blood on his forehead. I mentioned this to him, and he took his hat off, revealing an inch long cut about an inch above his eye.
So, I took Picnic and the wife to GW, where he got ten stitches, and they determined that my wife hadn’t broken her leg or torn anything major.
Then we went to NYC to visit some friends. We’d been planning this for months, and didn’t want to let a little injury get in the way. But we left hours later than we meant to, and hit the Holland Tunnel just as everyone going out in Manhattan on a Saturday night got there. I’ve never seen anything like it. The four lanes in the middle are EasyPass only at the toll, while the two on the right and two on the left are cash. I was in the second from the right, and the EasyPass lanes are moving much better than the cash lanes, obviously. So everyone wants to drive down the EasyPass lanes and then cut in in front of me. I played chicken with a big black Nissan Titan for about 50 yards before he finally backed off. It was extremely satisfying. I was less than six inches from him most of the time as he tried to nose his way into my lane and I wouldn’t let him. I hate people who do that. Traffic sucks, we all have to sit in it, and you’re making things worse. But I didn’t let anyone in. Ordinarily, if people are being polite, I’m happy to do it. But not when they’re sprinting to the end of the line and then trying to cut in at the front.
Anyway, it was an adventure. The weekend was fun. I got to see some of the holiday decorations in Times Square and all that. I love NYC. I didn’t think I would until I visited earlier this year. I’ve been three times now, and I’ll definitely go back, especially since we have a friend in Chelsea who happily gives up her apartment and stays with her boyfriend when we come visit.