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Dude… That Ain’t No Linebacker

Ah, September. That heady, happy, horny time of year when school begins anew and the education of our youth resumes in schoolhouses and on campuses across the nation. It’s a time for convocations and kick-ass keggers, early classes and late-night pizza, feverish all-nighters and… well, ‘feverish all-nighters’, if you know what I mean. Ah, what I wouldn’t give to be matriculating again right now myself.

(No, no, skippy — I said ‘matriculate‘. Ma-TRIC-ulate. Get yer noggin outta the gutter, there, Gilligan.)

Anyway, they say it’s never too late to teach an old dog new tricks. And I don’t know whether that’s literally true — frankly, I can’t think of too many things I’d want an old dog to do that would be terribly useful in the first place — but I do take the sentiment to heart. Just because I’ve been out of college for *mumble mumble* years doesn’t mean that I can’t keep furthering my education.

And so, in honor of the students flocking back to schools this week — like the swallows returning to Capistrano; or drunken, horny coeds returning to the dorm rooms of the ex-boyfriends they told themselves they’d never sleep with again — I’d like to share with you something that I’ve learned this young September. Maybe you can learn something from it, too. So here it is.

I learned that I can be a warm, sensitive husband, or I can be a loudmouth, one-of-the-guys beer-swilling sports fan. But I cannot be both at once.

Now, I’ve never had too much trouble keeping my ‘sports slob’ self away from my wife — sure, I yell at the TV sometimes (‘Throw the ball! Throw the goddamned ball!!‘), and might down a few beers during a game, but I generally maintain some level of non-Neanderthality when it’s just me and the missus around. I keep the obscenities to a dull roar, I don’t actually throw objects around the room, and I almost never paint any body parts in preparation for a game.

(And when I do, they’re usually not mine. And I say the dog looks good with blue and orange stripes down her back, dammit. She’s more than a pet — she’s a friggin’ mascot. Word.)

So, scaring my wife is not the problem. This time, anyway. No, what I learned is that I can get into trouble the other way, by letting my sweet, tender, creamy-centered side show among my jock-watching friends. Behold the conversation that did me in this past weekend:

Guy #1: Man, I don’t know. You think the Pats can pull off another Super Bowl this year?

Guy #2: It’s gonna be tough. Carolina’s looking good in the preseason. And Philly’s gonna be there, too.

Guy #1: Yeah. I don’t know if we’ve got the ‘D’ this year. We lost Washington, and Milloy before that, and now TBuck is gone…

Me: Ah, we’ll be fine. We’ve got Dillon now to run, and the defense is at least as good. Remember, we’ve got Shawn Colvin coming back — he was hurt all of last year, and —

Guy #1: Um… who?

MeColvin. Shawn Colvin. Linebacker, we picked him up from the Bears last year… remember?

Guy #2: Uh… you mean Roosevelt Colvin?

Me: Oh. Um, yeah. What’d I say?

Guy #1: Shawn Colvin. Isn’t that some pop star the chicks are all into?

Me (sweating): Er… well, uh, I don’t know. I think I was just getting confused between Colvin and… um, Shawn Springs. Or Sean Salisbury. Or, uh… yeah.

Guy #2: Dude. You are so married.

Let this be a lesson to all you guys out there. There’s a time for sappy, sugary sweetness with your lady, and there’s a time for pigskin, pork rinds, and pop-top beer cans. Don’t get them confused. If you’re gonna make like ‘Romeo’, you’d better make damned well sure you know whether you mean the sweet-talking Shakespearean Montague, or the smash-mouth, tough-as-nails, take-no-shit Crennel.

(Um, that’s ‘Romeo Crennel’. Defensive coordinator for the Patriots.

Yeah. I went a long-ass way for that one, didn’t I? Poopstain.)

Anyway, you get the point. And I learned my lesson. From now on, I’m keeping my Romeos — and my Colvins — straight. I damned near got a wedgie for my last brain fart, and I’m not doin’ it again. Even if it means hiding all my wife’s CDs. ‘Cause lord only knows when New England’s gonna draft some kid named ‘McLachlan’, or ‘Merchant’, or ‘Barenaked’, and I’ll be in this damned mess again. God, that’s embarrassing.