Super Bowl Sunday

My Mother thinks I am extremely picky about food. She thinks I am always complaining and being difficult. So when I am visiting them, she asks me what I want for breakfast. On the morning of Super Bowl Sunday, I told her I wanted one sausage and one grapefruit. She then said, "No eggs?!"  I repeated that I wanted one sausage and one grapefruit.

She said it was a shame she had to have people fill out questionnaires for breakfast, but she had often been "burnt" by picky eaters. I said that's because she does not listen to people; she makes too much food, and has to throw it away - correction:  would have to throw it away, were she a normal person...she saves left-over breakfast links for at least one week, maybe more; she once saved the remnants of my father's birthday cake for a year, and fed it to him exactly one year, two weeks, and 3 days later. He said it was OK.

She said she listens; the problem is that I'm a picky eater. So I say what does being picky have to do with making too much food. If she would even just pay attention to how people respond to her questionnaires, she would have the right amount.

She says she listens; it's just that if there's too much salt or something, I won't eat, and I throw everything off.

Fine. Leave it at that. And it would be fine were it left at that, but then we have to talk football. And we cannot discuss football the way normal people would; we have to discuss football through the gross distortion of right-wing fat boys and sky-pilots:

"Rush Limbaugh had a football analyst on who said that Indianapolis would win: any team with Peyton Manning on would win. You could take any 10 players at random and put them on the field with Peyton Manning, and that team would win."

I said that I wished I had gone into football analysis when I was younger. I mean, I was fully capable of saying things like any team with Peyton Manning on will win. There; I just said it.

"Well, there's more than that. This man has established himself over the years..."

"He's established him as an analyst by saying things like '...any team with Peyton Manning on will win?' " I thought about it briefly. "Say, did Peyton Manning's team go undefeated this year? Because they would have had to, if this guy is right."

She was ready. "Well, of course, he's actually a clergy man..."

Perfect.

"...that Rush has on, because he's always right about football."

"Not so good on faith and morals, though. A clergyman talking about betting on football?"

"He didn't talk about betting."

"He said which team is going to win. There is an implicit injunction to the faithful to get their money down on the Colts. You know, like the faithful steward who took the talents and drachmas and wagered them on Sea Biscuit...on the nose."

"No. The Super Bowl...."

"What? Is part of his ministry? He was encouraging gambling. Heck, talk to the boys in Vegas. They know. Probably every time the Football Reverend opens his mouth, a whole bunch of money from the faithful comes tumbling in on the team he picked."
She laughed. "He probably got involved while he was helping those with gambling addictions, and is harmlessly interested...as an observer."
"It's a good thing he wasn't running the campaign against painted ladies. He'd be on Rush's telling people all about bordellos...as an observer!"

Now I was handed a plate with three fried eggs.

"Thanks. I didn't want eggs."

"Oh, I forgot..."

"That's OK. They look good...mmmm! I'll eat 'em. And that's the best grapefruit I've had in a long time."

It was. Grapefruit in my area have not been good for a couple of years.

"Say..." I said, looking at my father and winking at him, "...where's that English muffin I didn't order?"

She was standing in front of the stove. "Oh," she said, reaching over her left hand to the toaster, pushed the knob, and two halves of an English muffin slid into the heat.

"It'll be a minute." she said.