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From The Treasure Chest:

LET ME IN OR I'LL CALL MY MOTHER!

A lesson in run-on sentences, notice given that youth is relative, reflections on NY Jets Quarterback Joe Namath, a pretty bad poem and a whether-you-wanted-it-or-not flash history of North American Football.

By Nan Jacobs © 2001

I was a huge Joe Namath fan. Some friends and I went to see his movie, "C.C. and Company" when it hit the theaters for, oh, a few days or so, before sliding into football star film oblivion. They wouldn't, however, let us in because I was 16. The rest of them were 17, old enough to get in by themselves but not adult enough to "accompany" me. Which is why they called me "Baby" (they drove by my house on my 17th? birthday, hanging out Bessie's window - that was my friend's mother's car's name - yelling "HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAAAABEEEEE", which bounced across the Delaware River to New Jersey and back and embarrassed the hockey sticks outta me. But now I laugh and sign their birthday cards "Baby"! HA!).

So... let's see, here… back in the sixties we go … We had to drive home, broke down on the way, begged my mom to come rescue us (and back then you still had to walk miles through five feet of snow to the nearest phone, which wasn't usually handy in your fanny pack), which she did (but as I recall, we had to cram all of us into a VW bug that leaked and had two inches of water on the back floor because it had been raining, and on my lap I held my three-year-old niece, who was eating a PBJ sandwich which, when she'd had enough, she spit out into my hand…) then begged another mom to come with us to the movie's later showing (what a good sport she was).

It was an all-day affair, sort of like the last sentence (wheeeeeeeeze), but Joe was delightful as a biker who made sandwiches in the grocery store, ate them, rewrapped the lunchmeat and bread, put them back on the shelves, and then bought a pack of gum and charmed the hoo-ha out of the cashier. He was engaging when he fooled around with his biker woman, too, and I suppose that's why a mom had to come with us, all because I was the only one who was still sixteen.

Joe, are you out there? Do you appreciate what we went through for you?

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And now as promised, the Pretty Bad Poem:

How The Best Was Won
A Tribute (?!) to Joe Namath and the NY Jets' 1969 Super Bowl win
By Nan Jacobs © 1969

Let's hear a cheer for Joe the Jet!
(the *N.F.L. will "get" him yet).
Michaels, the Colt with the field goal toe
was bugged by the mouth known as Broadway Joe.
Bubba, the master of super disaster
tried it on Joe -- but he should've blitzed faster.
Joe paved the AFL Super Bowl path
and left the Colts mourning the after-Namath.

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*NOTE: Of course, the NFC used to be the NFL, and the AFC used to be the AFL. And now, of course, the NFL is the AFC and the NFC, and the AFL is... not. Then there's the KFC...and now I'm confused. Good thing that new league put an "X" in their name… although I suppose it is now better referred to as the EX-FL.

GLOSSARY for those (and there are many) who are either not North American football fans, and/or those who are simply not North Americans:

  • NFL "then": National Football League
  • AFL "then": American Football League (the upstarts!)
  • NFC: National Football Conference (formerly the NFL)
  • AFC: American Football Conference (formerly the AFL) (Do you see a pattern yet?) (Good. Because I don't.)
  • NFL "today": The merger of the NFL and AFL, not long after Joe bragged his way into football history, produced the new NFL, which consists of the AFC and NFC, formerly the… well, you get the idea.
  • KFC: Kentucky Fried Chicken, a fast food chain here in the USA, run mostly by teenagers. I don't believe there ever existed a KFL. (Kentucky Fried Lugnuts?)
  • XFL: The "Hot New" league that promised to put the guts (literally) back into TV football in 2001, as well as demolish the bodies of the players (giving new meaning to the expression "football widow"). I never learned what the X stood for, but no matter; the football version of the WWF is extinct after one garish season. The EX-FL.


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