Football Ignites a Testosterone Tsunami Within My Sons

You know football season is off to a mighty good start when your gay best friend scuds off your battered old garage couch and chirps, "Dallas is done! Dallas is done! They're goin' down!" with what he says is a purposely exaggerated queeny lisp while wagging two pasty white index fingers above his head. Or do you?

Pigtail Sprite, my 22-month-old daughter, bumbles around her gloating, victory drunk uncle wearing only a saggy size 5 Huggies diaper. Let me be clear. Pigtail Sprite's in the diaper. Her uncle sports his usual -- baggy faded jeans cinched with a worn belt.

My flaxen-haired, blue eyed daughter, like me, probably doesn't give a flying flip about football. We both don't even know what 1st and 10 means. She gleefully points out to me that the ref's yellow flag is "pretty, mommy," seemingly because "lel-low" is her favorite color at least for the moment.

My sons (The Maestro of Mouth, 5, and Moody Cheeks McGee, 3), on the other hand, are totally insane about pro football. They turned their closet upside down this morning feverishly fishing their baggy but official NFL jerseys, helmets and funny little butt-hugging stretchy football pants out of a heap of dumped board games in anticipation of watching guys whose names they can scarcely pronounce tackle each other and slap each other's tight, toned asses for no apparent reason. They shout "defense" at all the wrong time, confuse teams and are oddly petrified of mascots.

By halftime (Saints vs. Browns, I think) they no longer care to sit with their salty chip encrusted mouths hanging open on the old garage couch alongside their salivating fan daddy and uncle and heed the urge to reenact the violence they've just studied for hours on TV. Instead of deepening their mini-butt impressions on the couch, they take to the sun bleached backyard lawn and start tackling each other in pathetically slow motion but with enough force to come crying to mommy every two minutes.

My superbowl predicition? Of course, I don't have one. But I know for sure that football ignites a testosterone tsunami in my boys that no amount of Benedryl could curb. Tonight's history making Peyton Manning vs. Eli Manning fraternal brother vs. brother showdown will likely have Mouth and Cheeks squaring off against each other with a fervent brother bloodthirst that will be quite inconvenient come bath/bed time. I'll be sure to have the first aid kit alongside the popcorn bowl on the old garage couch.