It's over. It's finally over. This was the longest day of my life. You don't understand. It was crazy. Perhaps I should understand. I hate ten roommates and one television. Ten big smelly touchdown holleran body painting football fanatic roommates and today is Football Tuesday. Two of them quit their jobs to be home today.
I hate football. I hate it. I would rather be the frog stuck in Joan Rivers throat than sit through another Football Tuesday. My only hope, the only hope was to get a hold of the remote. I planned this one out. Yesterday, on Football Tuesday Eve, I called in sick and slept until four in the afternoon. I would have slept longer, but my roommates always have beer and pizza night on the weeknights. The beer starts flowing at four and stop for an hour at four in the morning, when my roommates sleep for two hours, and they're up again at six because the beer flows again, the other way. That's my window. I stayed up all night and when the last one passed out in the living room, I climbed over their smelly sticky bodies and planted myself on the couch. I turned on the television and watched tv like I never watched before.
I watched infomercials, the shopping network, stale soap operas, everything and anything. I never left my spot on the couch, never turned the tv off. I saw alligators eat deer, open heart surgury, a naked man chased through the streets of Atlanta by the police. And one by one, like hippos rising out of the animal channel's African river, my roommates rose from their slumbers yawning and growling their morning songs of bad breath, chapping their lips with that filmy disgusting white stuff and scratching regions of their bodies that qualify for a stunt on Fear Factor.
They saw me sitting there, with the remote, and as uncivilized as they may be, like the lost tribes of the Amazon, they follow a certain code. The one who has the remote makes the decisions. This was the very code I was counting on today. They sat and watched, inbetween runs to the bathroom, reruns of black and white fifties family sitcoms. Ones where the actors are always smiling and there is a moral behind the show that isn't "don't get caught." They sit and watch as stuffy men with stuffy accents appraise jewelry and antique cookoo clocks. They sit and watch the mating habits of the Praying Mantis the history of Calculus. They glance at the clock, only being to decipher that when the big stick is pointing towards the pizza on the ceiling and the little stick is almost there, it's game time. The channel flips to a talk show with three women yelling at each other, then to a Spanish version of "Back to the Future." My tumb sweats as it changes the channel, trying to resist the thousands of pounds of frustration as the roommates stare at my shaking hand.
I have to pee. But I can't. If I leave my spot on the couch, it'd be gone. If I put down the remote, the game will be on when I come out. The Dolphins will be running up the center or Green Bay would be receivng a field kick, or some big guy would be tackled by a bigger guy and my roommates would all be yelling and hitting each other and bouncing peanuts off of each others pot bellies. the world would end in my living room because 11 guys are trying to move a slauthered pig carcus 100 yards. I cross my legs. I don't care if it looks girly. I'm willing to give that up. My manly dispostion and my dignity to keep football away from my eyes. All day long, they watched the cooking channel, while the steroid enhanced men from San Diego Hail Mary and the Raiders fumble. They watch a room get redecorated for under a thousand dollers, an old man confirm our thoughts of what is really happeneing at Area 51, and the fall season of women's coats modeled by "full-figured" women.
I hear teeth grinding. I can feel the stares of beady-eyed men on the backs of my ears. But they hold fast to the code. The code. I'm hungry, but I don't eat. I'm sleepy, but I dare not close my eyes. My urge to pee has passed, and I change the channel to a mystery in Kansas, and the host needs our help to track down the man who looks like the new bag-boy at the supermarket. He jsut doesn;t have the mustache.
Four o'clock, five... the hours pass slower than the Eagles on the channel I don't watch. Finally, eleven. Football Tuesday is over. I give up the remote. My lower half explodes in the bathroom and I'm taking the rest of my life off.
