Could I still...

(I posted this earlier today at Poetry Wrecks. Then after a bit, I decided I kinda liked it, which is rare. So I'm cross-posting it here. I haven't been finding time to write as much as I would like. Perhaps I need to look harder. Here's wishing you all a Happy Easter.)

Hello, friend
Could I still call you friend
It's been so long now
Days melded
Into a blur
Of weeks and half-years
Ofttimes I have thought of you
Fondly, always
Heartbreakingly, sometimes
We are bonded
By our humanness
And divided by the same
There are reasons I know
And others I never
Why this must be the way

Oh, friend
Would you still call me friend
On fitful days I go
To the one place
I know I can find you
And when I see you there
A smile breaks
Across my tired face
Silent and still
In virtual shadows
I remain unseen
To know you are well
Soothes the scar
And tempers the void
Slightly
Briefly
A lonesome raindrop
On dry, forsaken ground
Sweet, but short-lived
And never enough
But it is all I have

Goodbye, friend
Could I still call you friend

"And if you think that I could be forgiven, wish you would..."

Letting my emoticons out

My weekend could best be summed up by that wise old proverb.  Lemme see if I can get this right... Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Make a man put together a push mower, and he'll never buy anything that reads "some assembly required" again.

But alas, all's well that ends with only two or three pieces left over.  I would tell you more about my productive weekend, except that I've just been reading a provocative news blurb about how the thing people find most annoying about social media is those who brag about their fitness routine or latest diet.

They were followed by those who post pictures of every single meal they're about to eat, people who "check-in" at every place they go to, online game players (Farmville. Holla!), smug couples (dislike!), and excessively proud parents.

Wow, that really puts a crimp in my plans for today's post.  However, there are a couple of things that crossed my mind Sunday afternoon which I am able to share with you today.  After all, a man has a lot of time to think while mowing the lawn with a mower which mysteriously seems to be missing a critical part.

Firstly, it struck me that in all the years we've known each other, I've yet to share with you my extensive mental collection of emoticons.  And at my age, I feel that is important to do because, well, at some point it may become socially unacceptable for men of a certain age to still be using winky faces.

Let's start with the least famous, most underrated, underutilized emoticon of them all.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the high-five:

o/\o

Also known as the Eiffel Tower.  And occasionally mistaken for an anteater.  Or, a rather stubby phallus.

That's right, I'm bringing the high-five back.  Those other emoticons don't know how to act.  Why this emoticon is not more widely used is beyond me.  Truly one of the great mysteries of our time, right behind D.B. Cooper, and National Treasure.

Let's look at a few others:

:-/  Mister Empathy/Dismayed

:-(  Mister Frownie  (I use this one a lot.  I'm not as happy as you might think I am.)

:'(  Shedding a tear 

:''''''''''''(   Bawling  (Notice how the more tears you shed, the longer your face becomes.  Thus the expression "Why the long face?")

:'-)  Tears of happiness  (Never use this.  It only confuses people.)

>:(  Angry  (Or an unhappy king, though I've yet to find a use for an unhappy king.)

(_|_)  You've just been mooned.

<><  Fish

><  Kiss  (Or the slightly less popular, fish with its head cut off.)
 
:-P  Tongue sticking out/joking/flirting

:-P*  Tongue sticking out to catch a snowflake

*o)  Snowflake in eye  (And the other eye... apparently missing?  May you never have cause to use this one.)

:*)  Snowflake on cheek  (Do I have too many snowflake ones?)

* ≠ *  No two snowflakes are alike  (Obvs.)

@--->---  Rose  (Doesn't really get you out of as many virtual jams/doghouses as you might hope.)

(|)  Sideways hamburger  (Or, flat-head screw.  Again, somewhat difficult to find a practical use for this one.)

Well, I think it's pretty clear I could go on forever.  Unfortunately, there's not enough internet.

I would only leave you with one thought for the day:  If we can't communicate with a cleverly-arranged series of dots and symbols, we're no better than the cavemen...

Hmm, actually didn't they draw pictures on the cave walls?  Therefore, we're exactly like the cavemen.  So that example really doesn't work.

OK, so let's change that to "Even the cavemen (and cavewomen, although I don't see how they could be expected to draw after being drug around by that bone in their hair all day) realized the easiest and clearest way to communicate was through a series of pictures and symbols."

There.  Much better.

o/ ?

Oh, there was one other thing I wanted to share with you.  Remember when I did that Music Monday post?  No?  It was only five months ago, I don't see how you could have forgotten.  Well, in my mind it was going to become a semi-regular feature.  In reality, suffice it to say, it did not.

Anyhow, here's a band one or two of you might tolerate.  You know, kinda like you do me.  They're called The Hold Steady. It's hard to believe I've not shared them with you before now.  But when you only do a Music Monday post once every five months... well, suddenly it becomes easier to believe.  (And yes, I'm vaguely aware this is Tuesday.)



"She was a really good kisser / But she wasn't all that strict of a Christian / She was a damn good dancer / But she wasn't all that great of a girlfriend..."

Spring hopes

Sunday was spring.

There was hope in the air, so I breathed some in.  It felt good for my soul, so I breathed in some more.

I walked in the park.  People were stirring.  I guess they wanted some hope, too.

Suddenly, it seemed like this winter had lasted forever.

Wanting to take full advantage of the new weather, I fired up the grill for ribs, mushrooms, peppers, and potatoes.  After supper, we roasted marshmallows over the fire pit, then gathered around it for warmth as the night air grew chilly once again.

No matter how many years I file away, that first burst of spring always feels fresh and new all over again.  I think it always will.  I hope that it always does.

How does one describe that feeling?  How do you write a spring day?  For it is nothing you can hold in your hand.  It's something far better lived than imagined, breathed in than read, experienced than not.  But better it be written, than forgotten.

Just as September has that one day every year where fall announces its arrival with the first hint of a chill in the air, March has its own day, and spring, its own news to declare -- tidings of warmth, and yes, hope.

Sunday was that day.

Winter's cold had returned by Monday morn, but it was a different cold.  A sunny and bright crispness, rather than the usual gray and drear.

And there was hope.  The hope of spring.  The hope of something better.

And I knew that winter wouldn't be long.

"You only need the light when it's burning low / Only miss the sun when it starts to snow / Only know you love her when you let her go..."

Lost souls

Once upon a blog, I began a writing prompt which came to be known as Three Word Wednesday.  It feels like a lifetime ago now.  The premise was simple: I would post three words, and people would write something -- a poem, short story, whatever -- including the three words in their piece.  After a few years, with forty or fifty people participating each week, it became a bit more than I could handle, trying to read and comment on each post every week.  But as I was thinking of ending Three Word Wednesday, another blogger, who I knew as Thom G, offered to take it over.  That was a few years ago.  Today I checked to see if it was still going on, and was happy to find it alive and well.  So I decided to participate, if only for old time's sake.  If you're looking for a writing prompt, I encourage you to check it out here.

This week's words were: brutal, grope, transfer.


"Thirty-six?"

I say it with a tone of disbelief.  All along I had taken her to be thirty-ish.  I tell her as much, I think.  Oh God, was my tone offensive?  I mean, thirty-six isn't old.  It's just, in a place like this...

Ah yes, I can see it now.  A little age in her face.  The lipstick slathered on a bit too thick.  I had been too preoccupied with her body to notice.  It's not hard to imagine she knocked them dead back in her day.  Not that her day has passed.  What am I doing?  Is any of this out loud?

"You want a beer?"  She saves me from my over-thinking.  Damn, I probably should be the one asking her, right?

"Uh, sure."

"What do you drink?"

Um, chocolate milk?  Mountain Dew?  What's a popular beer?  Name a beer, any beer.  I look over at the bar.  There must be twenty beer signs.  I pick one.

"Uh, Guinness?"

"Wow, a real man."  Uh oh, I don't like the sound of that.

She orders the drinks.  She knows the bartender.  I surmise she comes out to a place not all that different from this every weekend.  Maybe more.

Thirty-six and single.  I want to save her.  I want to tell her it's gonna be hard.  But who I am to say?  I'm certainly no expert on the topic.

The beers come.  I take a healthy gulp of mine.  Holy S-word!  That tastes like used motor oil!  Who drinks this?  Vikings? 

I feel like I'm gonna throw up.  I manage to hold it down.

"Um, I don't have any cash for the beer, but I could transfer some money into your account?"

What am I saying?  Who says that!  She giggles.  Is she laughing with me or at me?  "It's fine, really.  You have a card, don't you?"  I nod.  "You can buy the next round."

And I do.  I buy her drinks all night.  It's clear she can out-drink me, especially with me pretending to sip on my Quaker State 10W-40.  I want to drink.  I want to forget about life for a few hours.  Or a few days.  I wonder what she wants to forget.  Or who.

She's at ease here.  Alive.  In the dives and the bars.  Places that used to be smoky.  But for me, this is brutal.  I don't like the crowd and the noise.  But mostly the crowd.

Whenever I catch myself leering at her chest, I immediately divert my gaze to a nearby table.  There's a kid in a backwards baseball cap who looks to be about fifteen groping a blonde.  He's wearing a shirt that says "I never sleep 'cause sleep is the cousin of death."  And all I can think is I could so go for a nap right now.

I glance at my phone.  It's 11:35.  It feels like 3 AM to me! 

I'm beginning to survey the crowd and decide to myself who I could take and who I couldn't if a fight broke out.  I decide I probably have an unhealthy sense of how tough I am.  Once again, she rescues me from myself.

"You wanna get outta here?"

And once again, I'm thinking I should have been the one to say that.

It's the perfect situation.  She's at that point of being just drunk enough to be fun but still sober enough to be fairly lucid.  

And why shouldn't I?  I've never had a one-night stand.  The closest I came was making out with some girl in the gazebo at the park when I was sixteen.  She was hot, but I forgot to get her number and never heard from her again.

But I know me.  I'll get too attached too soon.  That's why I can't have a one-night stand.  It's not some ethical, gentlemanly choice.  It's that I can never leave it at one night.  I'll be in love before the sun comes up.

But my God, that body.  And it will not quit.  The things I could do to her...

"Did you hear me?  Do you wanna go to my place or something?"

I want her.

I want to save her.  But I'm no savior.

"Yeah, let's get outta here."

Hell, I can't even save myself.

"Suddenly between sheets and eyelids / I am reminded why I don't do this / I fall in love far too quickly / I never want her to forget me..."

Curse of the grasshopper

This is the story of a boy who had no friends.  We'll call him... Cone.

Cone lived with his mother.  He was smart.  And even in those early years showed glimpses of the cleverness and impeccable timing that would someday make him one of the most hilarious people he knew.

Cone had but two flaws: An abnormal fear of grasshoppers, to the point where he would not come inside if one was on the screen door.  And he was highly competitive.  Sometimes winning backyard games by such a large margin and in such a dominating fashion that some of the kids would cry.  Especially those who were like five years younger than him.

Some called him a cheater.  Some said he shouldn't take the games so seriously.  Eventually, all of the other neighborhood kids wouldn't let Bone, er, Cone, join in any childhood games.

That's one sad story, eh?  Well, I have a confession:  It's not entirely true.

First of all, the boy's name wasn't Cone.  It's Bone.  And he wasn't a kid.  Well, OK, so that's debatable to some extent.  Also, they weren't childhood games.  They're iPhone games.  And lastly, he doesn't live with his mother.  And hasn't for a few years now, thank you very much!

But the grasshopper part, that's all too true.  I don't trust anything that can jump twenty times its length.  Big-eyed scary hopping freakazoids!

Am I making any sense?  The boy in this story is me!  And I'm running out of friends.

No, not real-life friends.  I never had very many of those in the first place.  But virtual friends, who are willing to play against me in Words With Friends, Scramble With Friends, Matching With Friends, Trivie, Ruzzle, etc.

Just last week, I challenged a friend's wife in Ruzzle.  It's basically the same thing as Boggle.  After one game -- a 2144 to 897 beat down -- she was all like, "You're cheating.  I'm not playing with you anymore.  I'm never gonna win, so what fun is that?"

Is that where this world is headed -- if we don't win, we just throw up our hands and quit?  If the Detroit Lions had that attitude, they'd have given up football thirty years ago.  OK, so that might not have been the worst idea ever.  Bad example.

Nevertheless, I'm mostly down to using the "Find a random opponent" option for new Ruzzle games.  Which is kind of the iPhone game equivalent of signing up for match.com.  You're basically admitting to the world, I can't find anyone to play Ruzzle with me on my own, I need help. 

I'm currently 72-1 in Ruzzle.  The one girl who beat me was a random opponent I'd beaten before.  She's probably one of those people who has nothing to do but play games on their phone, so they get abnormally good at them.

It's sad, really.

Words With Friends isn't quite as bad.  It doesn't keep up with your record, but I do lose a bit more often there.  (Though a cursory glance at my last ten games shows no losses.)  Still, I've seen my number of opponents dwindle over time.  What do I do if they all eventually quit playing me?  I mean, "friends," it's in the name of the game.  There's no Words Without Friends. 

I think we all know what happens to people with no virtual friends.  And it's not a pretty sight.  Turned back out into the real world, I could be forced to do unseemly things, like go out in public, make plans with people, and stop pretending I don't hear when someone speaks to me at the grocery store.

Oh no, I'm not ready for that.

But what am I supposed to do, not try?  Just completely ignore when someone leaves a triple word score wide open for me and play somewhere else on the board?  Pretend this is just a casual game for "fun?"

I can't do it, I tell you.  I can't!  It's against who I am.

Scared of grasshoppers, and slightly competitive in games and competitions that provide no real gain, financial or otherwise.

I'm Cone.  Nice to meet ya!

"And the games you'd play / You would always win / Always win..."

I thought Channing Tatum was a girl

Travel back with me if you will, to a land before Twitter.  In those dark recesses of 2006, the only way to instantaneously get your virtual thoughts about a major event to the world was by live blogging.

It was a somewhat laborious process, and one that I will demonstrate here for all posterity, by live-blogging tonight's Oscars.

Now, I should preface this by saying I am not a movie person.  In Trivial Pursuit, entertainment/movies is always my final pie piece.  I'll be up like five pie pieces to one, then have to wait and hope to get a question like "What does E.T. stand for" or "What was the sequel to Home Alone called?"

So this will probably be something like if 2 Chainz live-blogged the Country Music Awards, except with less profanity.  Some profanity, just less.

7:37 PM - Getting a late start.  Sorry.

7:39 PM - I have no idea who this host guy is.  Looks kinda like Jon Cryer and Dr. Patrick Drake from General Hospital had a kid.

7:40 PM - OK, that boobs song was stupid.  And I'm a boob fan!

7:44 PM - Has Adele already sung?  Because if so, I may have a tough time sitting through three hours of this.

7:47 PM - Time for our first award of the evening.  Finally!  And it goes to... some guy I've never heard of, not surprisingly.  Kristoff Holtz?  (Bone trivia: One of my favorite songwriters is Kris Kristofferson.)

7:48 PM - Oh, according to Twitter, that should have been Christoph Waltz.  Why was I trying to make him Russian?

7:51 PM - Paul Rudd is announcing something!  I know him!

7:52 PM - Paperman just won something.  I'll let you guess whether or not I've seen that one.  (Bone trivia: Paperboy was one of my favorite Nintendo games.)

7:59 PM - This guy is wearing a kilt!  Not judging, just stating.

8:01 PM - Ooo, I've heard of three of the nominees in this category!  Django Unchained, Skyfall, and Lincoln.  I bet none of them win.

8:01:22 PM - None of them won.

8:02 PM - Just an aside: I don't know anything about movies, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Lincoln was probably a slightly better film than Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, if not as historically accurate.

8:04 PM - Another aside: I have never seen a single James Bond movie.  Well, unless you count Austin Powers.

8:07 PM - Life Of Pi?  I haven't the faintest clue what that could be about.  Though it does remind me of my freshman year of college, which I sometimes refer to as Death By Calculus.

8:09 PM - I think I always thought Channing Tatum was a girl!!  Suddenly, I'm totally reevaluating the mental image I have of Dakota Fanning.

8:14 PM - Anna Karenina is just now being made into a movie??  Tolstoy.  There's a tough read.   My brain is hurting just thinking about it.

8:23 PM - Halle Berry!  I liked her in Flintstones.

8:27 PM - Am I the only one thoroughly enjoying all these George Clooney crowd shots?  I think not.  I gotta tell you though, back in the Facts Of Life days, I never saw this coming.  I always thought Nancy McKeon had the brightest star.  Or Charlotte Rae.

8:31 PM - I have no idea who this lady singing is.  Some song about a spider's touch?

8:32 PM - According to Xinh, my resident Gchat movie expert, that is Shirley Bassey.  And just to be sure, I google imaged Shirley Bassey for the first time in my life. Yep, that's her.

8:53 PM - And... we're back!  Sorry.  Had to take a break there.  Actually, I found a site where you can play Paperboy online.  OK, that's a lie.  I simply lost interest.  This show has really gone downhill ever since Kilt Guy. 

8:54 PM - John Travolta!!!  Loved him in Welcome Back, Kotter.  I wonder what in the world he's been up to these last forty years.

8:58 PM - Jennifer Hudson, I've heard of her.  Not really sure what she sings, but wow, what a voice!

9:01 PM - I'm suffering from Adele-.... what's the opposite of fatigue?

9:02 PM - Vigor, according to thesaurus.com.  Adele-vigor?  That doesn't sound right.

9:04 PM - If they're gonna do all this Les Miserables stuff, could they at least do "Master Of The House?"  It's the only one I know. 

9:05 PM - Worst part about live-blogging the Oscars?  Having to italicize all the movie titles.  But I can't not italicize them!  Something very bad would happen.  I'm sure of it.

9:10 PM - OK, they just trotted the talking teddy bear out on stage.  I'm not sure how much longer I can watch this garbage.

9:15 PM - If I ever won an award, a teddy bear and Mark Wahlberg would probably hand it to me.  That'd be my luck.

9:16 PM - We have a tie!  A tie?  What a crock!  Next year, why don't we just give out participation ribbons to all the nominees.

9:17 PM - The teddy bear is gone.  Thank God.  I never thought I'd be so happy to see this Patrick Cryer guy in my life.

9:20 PM - Call it Oscar blogger's intuition, but sometimes I get the feeling you actually have to watch movies to get some of these jokes.

9:21 PM - Just a heads-up, if and when Adele finally sings, I'm probably going to bed.  I know it's only 7:30 in California, but some of us here in the heartland have to go to work in the morning.  Besides, Adele pretty much sings me to sleep every night anyway.  Sometimes gentle sobbing is involved.

9:24 PM - Anne Hathaway!  She was tantalizing in Devil Wears Prada.... I heard.

9:25 PM - Xinh says she probably got her start in The Princess Diaries.  If only it had been The Princess Bride.  I've seen that.

9:28 PM - Is it just me, or are the same six movies nominated for everything?

9:31 PM - Sandra Bullock!  I've seen at least three of her movies!  You cannot say that about very many actresses.  It's a short list.  The only ones that come to mind at present are Sandra Bullock, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, and the woman who played Adrian in the Rocky movies.

9:34 PM - Jennifer Lawrence?  There are way too many Jennifers for me to keep up with.  Of course, even one would be a challenge.

9:38 PM - Ladies and gentlemen... Adele!!!  That's gonna do it for this year's Oscars.  I'm pretty sure that's all the big awards anyway.  I don't know about you, but I think that went remarkably well considering I've seen exactly one movie that came out in the past year.  Let's have one more token round of applause for our host, the incomparable Patrick Cryer.  He may not have always been funny, but I rather enjoyed his demeanor.

See you next year! 

OK, probably not.

"You take the good / You take the bad / You take them both / And there you have / The facts of life..."

A blogger grapples with forty

It is a largely nondescript Saturday evening.  A group of people have gathered in a restaurant.  There are candles on a cake.  Presents on a table.

There are forty-two or forty-three people in all.  I would count them later.  Why were they all here?  It must be bingo night.  Or they must be having a raffle or something, giving away cash.

No, they are here for me.  Some by choice, some because they're family -- they're required to love me.  There are aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, even a former co-worker and her husband.

I am caught off guard.  When my sister asked me out to dinner, I had been suspicious at first.  But by the time we arrived at the restaurant, I had forgotten to be.

There is a face cake, with me as a kid of probably seven or eight, with my Bo Duke hair, wearing a football jersey, shoulder pads, football pants, full uniform.  Funny thing, I never actually played football on a team or anything.  But still, a face cake!

My Mom was nice enough to bring an essay I wrote in grade school, "The Person I Admire The Most."  The person I chose to write about?  Axl.  He is at the party, and he is LOVING this.

"Come on, we were in the fourth grade!" I really thought we were.
"Bone, we were in seventh grade."
"What?  So I wrote this when I was like thirteen?"
"Yep."
"Oh... well... that is a bit more embarrassing."

He will milk the essay for every last drop.  I wouldn't expect anything less.  That's not to mention all the "You write like a girl" comments the essay drew. 

Elsewhere, Nephew Bone is proudly displaying Uncle Bone's age with his fingers. (Is this really the sort of thing we want to be teaching our children?)  Or attempting to anyway.  More times than not he winds up holding up four fingers on each hand.

There are the requisite gag gifts.  At least, I hope they are gag gifts -- Polident, chocolate laxative, and a Viagra bottle filled with M&M's.  At least, I hope they were M&M's.

It strikes me more than once during the evening that the next time this many people show up for me will be at my funeral.  Or wedding.  Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. (What? Either way, I'll most likely be in a suit and people will be crying.)

There is an ease to the evening.  A comfortableness.  But still, there is an underlying feeling I can't seem to escape.  A feeling of "I can't believe this is me."

And yet, it is.

I still feel twenty-five most of the time, save for maybe Friday evenings when a week of work and waking up at 5:30 has caught up with me and I fall asleep on the couch by 8 PM.  And yet, these candles on the cake betray me.

For...... ty.

There, I said it.  I admit it's been a little tough for me.  And yes, I know that if I live long enough, someday forty will seem oh so young.  I guess I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do now, how I'm supposed to handle it.  Do I just pretend to take it all in stride, when suddenly life doesn't seem quite as long as it used to seem?

Am I not supposed to say that?  Is it taboo?   It's sure easier not to think about it, if only for sanity's sake.  So much more convenient to put it out of mind.

And yet, we mark the passing of these years with, of all things, candles.  Has ever there been a thing more symbolic of the life's impermanence than one of these?  Coming to life, burning to its peak of brightness, flickering for a little while, and then gone, all in a matter of moments.  (I don't know about you, but I think this is shaping up to be one of my funniest posts ever!)

I read a quote recently that I would butcher badly if I tried to paraphrase.  But the gist was that life is made up of a million instants.  There is this instant, and that instant, and as soon as they are here they are gone, a part of our past.

So there is right now, then there all the days of our past and all the days of our future.  And I suppose I have always tended to yearn for the larger of those.  When I was young, I longed to be older.  And now that I am older...

People have been saying all the usual things to try and be helpful/keep me from losing it:  "Life begins at forty."  "Forty is the new thirty."  Or even better, "Forty is the new twenty-five."  "You're just a baby."  (I gotta admit, it was refreshing hearing that from someone other than a current or ex-girlfriend.)   "You're not really forty,  you're eighteen with twenty-two years experience."  And my personal favorite, "Studies have shown that people who have the most birthdays, live the longest."

Still, it's just weird for me to think about not being here someday.  Me!  Bone!  I mean, take a moment and try and picture each of your lives with no Bone in it....

Not a few seconds, a moment...

Not a pretty sight, is it?  Didn't think so.  Here, have one of these odd-shaped blue M&M's.  They've sure been making me feel better.

I'll close with a photo.  My aunt who snowbirds in Florida sent me a birthday card.  Inside, she had included the newspaper clipping of my first birthday.

(My God, was I adorable!  I could have been the Gerber baby!   Kinda makes you wonder what in the world happened.)

She wrote, "I came across this handsome little boy.  Thought you'd like to keep it as I have all these birthdays.  Lots of love..."

Wow.

It brought me to a complete stop.

Out of life's million little "instants," only a cherished few are able to do that.

"Guess my life's moved / At near light speed / Since I started this wild and crazy run / Such a long way / From that first birthday..."

More salad, please

"These were the happy days, the salad days as they say..."
~ Raising Arizona

My typical January blahs lacked their usual bite this winter.  And I have a couple of theories as to why.

One is that the blahs are holding off until February when I turn that age which shall not be spoken, thus in all probability entering a mid-life crisis the likes of which the world has scarcely seen, at which point my usual winter depression will last indefinitely, or longer.

The other has to do with the fact that this particular January has included a beautiful 2-inch snow (school was out for two days) and yet another Bama national championship.  To slightly reword the song, those are but two of my favorite things.  So I spent a decent portion of the month on cloud ten.

The man most responsible for this -- the football, not the snow, well not as far as I know anyway -- is Nicholas Lou Saban.

I nearly titled this post, "Have you ever really, really really ever loved a man?"  Because I have.  I do.  I love this man.  And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

If I would've had a Nick Saban in my formative years... who knows where I'd be right now?  I'd probably own a small country.  Or at least an E-Trade account.

These are the new glory days.  Three national championships in four seasons.  Are you kidding me??  My life has never been better.  As a sports fan, I mean.  (Important caveat there.)  These are my salad days.

For better or for worse, folks around these parts place a fair amount of importance on our college football, and, more specifically, our Crimson Tide.  I would even go so far as to say that for a majority of people in this state, their top three priorities are God, family, and Alabama football.  And not always in that order.

I just assumed it was that way everywhere.  It's kinda like the first time you leave the South and discover they don't have sweet tea in other places.  But in my golden years, I've come to realize that for many, many people, football is nothing more than a dalliance. (You have no idea how long I've been trying to work "dalliance" into a post.)

Just as I never thought to write about the delights of sweet tea, I've not written about Bama football from this angle.  So allow me to tell you a few things about our organization.

"Roll, Tide" is our cheer.  Maybe you've heard of it.  If not, you can hear it from 100,000 fans inside Bryant-Denny Stadium on most Saturdays in the fall, or in a million living rooms across the state on those same Saturdays, where families gather around televisions, and sometimes radios, hoping for another Bama victory, high-fiving and yes, roll-tiding after every big play.

But it's not just a cheer.  It can be a greeting, a better way to say "goodbye," even a question.  Say you've had a minor misunderstanding with someone.  After talking things out, you might say, "Roll Tide?" instead of "We good?"  And they might respond with, "Roll Tide" instead of "Yeah, we're good."

You might hear it from someone you pass in a convenience store, or your postal carrier.  You hear it at school and at work, where people wear their Bama gear on Fridays during the season.  Every Friday.  Not saying we're superstitious or anything, but if you didn't wear your Bama shirt and they were to lose that weekend, well good luck reconciling with your family.

I've heard it from a hotel front-desk clerk in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a McDonald's drive-thru attendant in Nowhere, Tennessee.  I've even heard it from a pulpit on Sunday, several times. (Is it any wonder those faith and football priorities get muddled occasionally?)

Hear it from a stranger, and you've instantly made a lifelong friend.

It's an aura that hangs in the air of this state like the heavy blanket of humidity on a summer night.  A commonality.  And a source of pride.

You didn't have to attend the university to get it.  We get it from our mothers and our fathers, our uncles and aunts, or maybe our granddaddy, our older brother or sister.  One of my favorite all-time family photos is of my aunt as a teenager in the '60s, wearing a Bama t-shirt.  Some pick it up on their own, attend their first game, and fall in love.

However you get it, once it's in you, it's lifelong.  For better or for worse.  In sickness and in health.  Good seasons and bad.  'Til death do you part.

Is it too important?  That probably all depends on who you ask.  But is it important?  No question.

My Mom once loved a man who wasn't my father.  His name was Bear Bryant.  He became coach of the Crimson Tide when she was 8, and he retired and passed away when I was 9.  An entire generation.  He won a few championships, too. Six, to be exact.

So the morning after this year's Bama team had showed them northern boys from Notre Dame what real football was, I was talking to Mom and decided to ask her if this was how it was then.  If these glory days were as good as the old glory days.

Now this is a woman who, before and during many a football game, has been known to utter the statement, "Please look down on us today, Bear," as if soliciting some divine intervention.  The same mother who apparently trained me so that when a Sunday school teacher showed me a picture that was supposed to be Jesus walking on water and asked who it was, I replied, "That's Bear Bryant.  My Momma says he is the only person who can walk on water."

So when I asked her, "Is this how it was in the old days?" the answer I got was not the answer I expected.

After first scolding me for intimating she was old, she kind of laughed as she said, "No.  We never won like this."

Roll Tide?

Roll. Tide.

"I'm feelin' pretty good and that's the truth / It's neither drink nor drug induced, no / I'm just doin' alright / And it's a great day to be alive..."