Still injured....

So it is Super Sunday and I'm still on the injured list -- laid low by yet another bout of tendinitis, this time in my left hand which makes knitting, typing, putting my bra on and clapping impossible. Rats. The Steelers suffer fewer injuries playing football than I do writing books.

This game should be a good one and, if I didn't love the Steelers, I'd cheer for the Packers. They are a great team, they have a terrific quarterback, and in past Super Bowls they have defeated both the Raiders and the Patriots. So there.

I'm the first to admit that I relish the atavistic brutality of football. I think it is a dying sport because all those folks who are in denial about the more primal part of their nature are whining about how "unsafe" it is. Well, yeah, but... It's kind of like Thunderdome -- Listen all! This is the truth of it. Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now! Busted up, and everyone talking about hard rain! But we've learned, by the dust of them all...  Now, when men get to fighting, it happens here! And it finishes here! Two men enter; one man leaves. 

But life has taught me when people don'y have an outlet for that part of themselves it comes out in other ways -- sick, twisted, perverted ways. Aggression is inherent in human nature and if our gladiators want to take that on I say good for them.

Of course football now is safer than it was back in the day. I still appreciate those players who made the game so exciting when I was young enough to be thrilled by their reckless abandon. I was listening to an interview with John Stallworth who is in Dallas for tonight's game and he was talking about what a thrill it was to have been a part of those Golden Years, the men of steel. He said that the night before he had gotten together with "Franco, Mel and Joe Greene" and what a good time they had. Don't I wish I'd been there, too.





Go Steelers!