Football playoffs are arduous for those of us who have general anxiety disorder. I'm on meds and they help, but the lucky-shirt-wearing, crossing-left-leg-over-right-to-insure-a-score fissures in my brain run deep, like a Jordy Nelson post pattern.
This Sunday, my team -- I can't type their name because... trust me, I just can't -- are (at the time of this writing) 7.5 point underdogs. I will tell myself that the coaching staff, the players, the entire NFL Universe does not know I exist, and therefore whether I sit cross-legged, or choose the throwback jersey instead of my usual jersey -- or go with the vintage sweatshirt from their last NFC championship? -- won't make or break the outcome of the game. I mean, when the player who dropped a pass comes back to the sideline, he won't tell his positions coach, "I would have caught it, and probably scored, but some woman in Milwaukee is wearing the wrong shirt."
But, then again.. Oprah? The Secret?
So, I'll just sit in the green chair 13 minutes before kick-off, cutting off the circulation to my legs, in my lucky jersey after I go to Mass, light the big candle (it can't hurt) and say a carefully worded prayer. Hopefully, I won't be put on hold. Your prayers will be answered in the order they were received. Damn it! I knew I should have started at training camp!
I'm sweating as I hit "post." I'm taking a big chance by putting this out there... because of what my Irish Catholic mother used to say, "If you say it out loud, it won't come true." This doesn't count as "out loud" does it? I must remember to heed the advice given by one-whose-name-I-cannot-type, and R-E-L-A-X.