Football, work can be mixed (01/18/06)

Thanks to the Colts, I got some work done this weekend.

That wasn’t the original plan.

The original plan was to sit in my favorite chair, put my feet up, munch on some pistachios, and watch the Colts rack up another win on their way to the inevitable Super Bowl that all of us have been banking on for months.

And then the game started.

The Steelers — looking weirdly like the Colts at times — took command on their first possession, marching down the field to a touchdown. Then the Colts — looking weirdly like most of their opponents this season — sputtered on offense and were forced to punt.

The sense of impending doom, the feeling that we were watching a slow-motion train wreck couldn’t be shaken.

Like a kid who runs from the room when something scary happens on television, I started getting busy with other projects, watching the game with only a fraction of my attention.

My favorite chair was no longer comfortable, so I sat on the floor and started sorting and filing the hundreds of snapshots that have accumulated over the years. (The best ones are in albums, but like most families we have way too many photos in the house.)

That occupied most of the first half, long enough for the Steelers to score again and for the Colts to show uncharacteristic inability to convert on third down.

Sensing my nervous energy over the game, my wife started adding to my chores. With the photos sorted, I started going through a pile of old sweaters unloaded from a closet.

Keeping one eye on the Colts, I figured out which ones I might wear again and which ones should go to Goodwill.

By the time I was finished, it was halftime and things weren’t looking good for the boys in blue. I called Sally in Bloomington.

She, too, was having trouble watching and had decided to get some work done on her computer, watching an online text version of the play-by-play at the same time.

Photos and sweaters sorted, I walked the dog and came back hoping that the third quarter would be different.

It wasn’t, and I soon needed another distraction.

So while the Colts kept trying — by fits and starts — to get back into the game, I started on the family CD collection. You’d be amazed how many of the things can be accumulated, and it’s often hard to find the one you’re looking for. (Reading the titles on the edge of CD cases is a real challenge when you have bifocals.)

Connie was equally jumpy about the game, coming and going from the room. I’m not sure what she thought when she came back in to find me stacking up CDs all over the place, putting classical in one pile, rhythm and blues in another, jazz in another, and rock in several others.

By the fourth quarter, I was done, though I’d been interrupted by intense sections of the game that held my interest — and boosted my hopes — for several minutes at a time.

There was only one more thing to sort: Socks.

I moved to the bedroom and another TV set. Warm socks, sweat socks, dress socks, socks with holes in them that for some reason I haven’t thrown out, there were soon piles of them on the bed as I watched the game out of the corner of my eye.

There was even a pile of oddball socks: A pair of battery-operated electric socks that employees gave me when we first went to Moldova, a pair of argyles that had never been worn, and a pair featuring the likeness of the Tasmanian Devil which should never have been made in the first place.

The Colts and I finished about the same time, though the sock sorting job lacked the excitement and the heartbreak of the final seconds of the game.

Sad as I am to see Indianapolis defeated, it may be a good thing.

I’m not sure I could come up with enough chores to get me through another game like that.[[In-content Ad]]