are you ready for some football?: we need football. the pros and colleges have mostly called off their schedules this week, so we find it where we can, where political and security concerns are a null issue: peewee football. my nephews -- numbers 44 and 80 in your program, but numbers 1 and 1a in your hearts -- play for the team in their town...no, no, after watching today's display, they are the team in their town. sure, they lost 13-7, but that's hardly the point.

the point is this: this is life. this is normalcy. this is kids playing football on a cool saturday afternoon. the game really has no implication, and it shows as i watched them play in the mud on the sideline. but listen to that: they were playing in the mud on the sideline. these are kids being kids and, thankfully, they're not incredibly affected by this week's atrocities. after the game, they weren't sullen for losing; they wished me a happy birthday and fooled around: i talked about the extra padding on their bellies, they mocked the "wet paper towels" that comprised the "muscles" (quotes, theirs) of my arms.

i bought a red, white & blue ribbon the cheerleaders had made and my fee is going to the red cross. you couldn't really escape it, even coming here. but you didn't see a people defeated. hell, i was assured to see that, even during these troubled times, grown men can still be whipped into a frenzy by little kids playing sports. leaving the game, i had the strong desire to throw the football around and i might just do that. the terrorists may have hit the wtc and the pentagon, but their real targets are still standing.