Returning with fall: Friday night lights … and clothes

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Moody High School bearcatsFall is almost here again and I’m excited because (A) football starts, and (B) people start wearing clothes again. I get a double dose of high school football this year. Not only is my nephew playing again for the Marion Local Flyers (No. 1 in the State in their conference last year – snap!), my brother has begun his coaching career with the Bearcats of Moody High School in Moody, Texas.

I happen to believe that high school and college football are the only two worth watching. I’ve about had it with the NFL. I’m sure there are still a few, but for the most part I don’t believe guys playing for fifty gabillion dollars a year care anything about the love of the game. Pro ball has become a razzle-dazzle affair, with enormous sums of money thrown about — it’s no fun anymore. It’s a production, not a game. If I wanted to watch giant guys in tights flit around in a choreographed commercial for beer, I’d find some transvestites to hang out with.

The second best thing about fall is that people who have absolutely no business going around half dressed will mercifully put their clothes back on. At least when they have to leave the cab of the truck. I pray the first memories to be taken from me if I contract Alzheimer’s are those of the thousand or so vehicles we’ve passed with the driver shirtless, eating a bag of Doritos and steering with a giant, hairy belly. And I say “vehicles” because I’ve seen just as many shirtless four-wheelers as I have truckers. People honestly believe they become invisible when the door shuts. Either that, or they just don’t give a rat’s ass. I have ceased to be amazed.

Thankfully, you see a lot less back fur in the fall. I don’t mean to sound like Judgey McJudge here, but if your back fur is so long it looks like a muppet is trying to escape from your wifebeater, please, for the love of God, throw a shirt on before going into the truck stop. Seriously, I stood in line behind a guy in El Paso, Texas, once with back fur so long it was literally invading my private space bubble. Of course I wanted to touch it, I wanted to pet it like a puppy. It was strangely beautiful and silky, like I would imagine the hair on a sloth to be (without the gross fungus – like a baby sloth or something) and it was a personal victory to escape the line without being arrested for petting a man’s back. I’m not sure what the point of revealing this horrendous little scenario was, other than to prove I become fixated on the most inappropriate things I possibly can. Oh yeah, fall. Fall is awesome.