If you're thinking we're the ones who answer the door wrapped in Saran Wrap with a cool martini on a silver tray... banish the thought.
Please.
For both of our sake.
I'm speaking of those of us legally joined to men who crossed the fine line between fan and fanatic when they joined a Fantasy Football league.
For a few bucks at the start of the season, participants take ownership not of their hometown rooting interest, but their own version of a super team personally culled from the rosters of all NFL teams.
While a handful of men are actually paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make these kinds of decisions professionally, the amateur GMs not only pay for the privilege, but somewhere in their hearts believe they can and will do it better.
Every game, every injury feeds into their master strategy. Every week the dream begins anew.
Think in terms of an office pool on 'roids. Knowledge is power. Power wins. More knowledge = more power = more wins is the mantra. The logic works as well as the freshman philosophy chesnut "God is love - love is blind - Stevie Wonder is blind- Stevie Wonder is God."
But it doesn't stop the weekday quest for information, the all-day Sunday picture-in-picture pigskin feast (supplemented by regular runs to the computer to check scoring) and the big wrap-up Monday night game which cinches the weekly winners. Before Fantasy Football it could have been one of those cellar dwellar games that got the sad sap who programmed it fired. Thanks to FF, hundreds of thousands of addicts watch the game on the outside hope that they will get those last few necessary points if "their" kicker gets 28 field goals or "their" wide receiver picks up a scant 350 yards.
Tuesday the research begins anew, trades and substitutions have to be in by Wednesday.
I first encountered the reality last winter. While staying with my brother and his family, I saw firsthand how his wife and children tip-toed about on football Sunday so as not to get in his sightlines between watching the games, running to the computer and calling the "other guys" on the phone. It wasn't pretty.
But that was my brother, a wonderful guy who just might have gotten an extra competition chromosone (or six).
I saw no danger in low-key Charlie joining my brother's league this year. In fact, I encouraged it. I have only myself to blame.
So abrupt was the change in his focus and intensity this season that I started cruising the web for obscure neurological phenomena.
"I'm sorry Mrs. Griggs, but your husband has acute Landry syndrome of the occipital lobe, but with surgery I believe he can be returned to normalcy."
My quest was calmed when a friend invited me to share a "plate of zen" for lunch. As the editor of an alternative weekly, she choose the most relaxing, people enpowering restaurant in town. We sipped green tea and languished happily in the unhurried service. She whispered to me that the delicious bread was actually made by a cult (the article was coming out that week) and I instantly cut my carbs.
We talked about attending a local film study series together and the deeper issues in the local arts community.
I felt I was in a very safe place. Her husband is a serious academic. I could raise the Fantasy Football issue and educate her on the creeping scourge of the distracted proletariat.
I instinctively grabbed a huge chunk of banned bread when I learned she too suffered in silence. Even dissertations stop in hope of a Monday Night Miracle.
It's insidious.
I've recently been trying to coordinate family calendars for the holidays to discover that the two weekends before Christmas have Saturday, Sunday and Monday games.
If I can find the programmer who put that particular package together, he or she will discover to what levels of depravity real Desparate Housewives will actually sink.
We are legion.
And we've got time on our hands.




Copyright 2005 Judi Griggs