My Two Favorite Sports: Golf and Football

Actually, I’ve never been on a golf course, except to stroll on one I once lived beside.  I’ve never tried to play the game.  And I don’t remember the last time I watched a football game of any kind.  If we’re talking about all the way through, maybe never.  My daughters and I, when they were young teenagers, did try to watch the Super Bowl once.  Everyone else was doing it.  So we had ourselves a little Super Bowl party.  But my younger daughter and I fell asleep.  My oldest daughter was so disgusted with us.

So why do I like these sports so much?  To be more precise, the football would have to be Vanderbilt football—and Vanderbilt basketball.    These are the sports I like because they’re my husband’s sports.  He plays golf at least once a week and has season’s tickets to all of Vanderbilt’s home games, both football and basketball.  So it keeps him out of the house.

This in no way means that I don’t like my husband’s company.  I enjoy it very much.  I had been divorced a number of years when I met him and had no plans to remarry.  But we clicked right away and have been very happy ever since.  When we met, we were living in different cities and would communicate, often, by phone and emails.  He still reminds me that in one of the first emails I sent him I told him I was the type of person who needed a lot of time alone.  Somehow, I thought that was something he should know about me.  

I was a member of a large family as a child and had many cousins and siblings to play with.  I was especially close to my younger sister, and we played together every day, all day.  One day we were playing together in the woods surrounding our home when I slipped away from her and climbed a large poplar tree, all the way to the top.  I closed my eyes and let the wind sway me back and forth, enjoying the solitude.  I was quite annoyed when my little sister kept calling for me to come down.

I still sometimes just yearn for solitude.  One of the things I appreciate most about my husband is that he has always accepted and respected this personality trait.  And I really try to listen politely when he tells me about his golf game.