Big Fish

KADEN

“Run, fucker!” I yelled at my television screen, wishing I had some popcorn I could throw at it. The guy in the blue uniform carrying the ball on a field hundreds of miles away promptly ignored my advice, the briefest of pauses resulting in him taking a shoulder to the stomach.

“Serves you right,” I muttered, swigging my beer. I was well into my Sunday afternoon ritual, the smell of a steak from the grill on my balcony drifting to my nostrils on a light breeze to where I sat on the couch and watched the game. “I told you to run, not to stop.”

The player accepted the hand a teammate stretched out to help him up, not having been seriously injured. That was a good thing, since they played on the team I was cheering for this game. I stretched out on the couch, slinging my arm across the leather while I waited for the game to resume.

Football hadn’t really been a very important part of my life until we moved to Texas. The game was a religion down there, and at some stage as a prepube