Yesterday was my first day at my new job as a Redskins fan. It went better than I expected. They won, so that's something. A lot of my friends are baffled. "How could you go from the Cowboys to...that?" It's long story, but to put it simply: I got tired of losing. My entire twenties came and went without me wearing a Cowboys hat or jersey after December. That's just sad. I figure that if I'm gonna lose, at least I can do it with my home team. The better question is how did I become a Cowboys fan in the first place.
I've spent the better portion of my life trying to play catch up. Looking back at my childhood, it's remarkable that I wasn't a social leper. The first time I ever heard Purple Rain was when Prince played the Super Bowl. First time I ever saw Thriller? My senior year of high school which was in 2000! I didn't grow up with a bunch of religious nuts who shunned society. Quite the contrary, I think their sinning was the reason they didn't have time to expose me to stuff that normal kids see early in life.
Up until the seventh grade, I had no idea what the rules of football were. I used to play throwback with the kids in the neighborhood, but that was just all of us standing in a crowd waiting for one kid to throw the ball. One of us caught it and the other kids tried to slam his head into the concrete. Up until I was 12 I actually thought the goal of football was this:
One team kicks the ball to the other. They throw it back and forth to one another as many times as it takes until they get halfway across the field and then one of them tries to kick it through the goal post. Basically, I thought a field goal was a touchdown, and I had no concept of downs.
Don't laugh at me and don't you dare cry for me Argentina. The truth is...there were no male role models around. Nobody in my family was home enough to watch football, let alone explain it to me. I was usually home alone on Sundays so I'd just watch tapes of cartoons or play video games. And no, I never had Tecmo Bowl or Madden. My first football game was NFL '94 and I got that used in 96.
So what does this have to do with becoming a Cowboys fan? Well, I only remember my family watching football together three times before 7th grade: Superbowl XXII and XXVI. That's when the Redskins went. There was one other time that I remember: Super Bowl XXVII. That was January 31, 1993. By some strange happenstance a few family members showed up at our apartment to watch the game. I think it was because Michael Jackson was doing the halftime show. Someone asked me who I was going for, because they wanted to bet. I picked the Cowboys because I liked their colors. That's it. I knew nothing about them. They won, and I got five bucks. The next year they repeated the Super Bowl against the Bills, I stuck with them and they won again.
And that boys and girls is how I became a Cowboys fan...Because there was money in it. Now I've moved on (Now watch, they're gonna win this year just to spite me).
The moral of today's story: Little boys need someone to teach them about sports. You don't even wanna know what I thought about basketball. I'll give you a snippet: I thought free throws were just something you did every few minutes.
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