Susan May Warren

Every year, we have a Mandatory Warren Event (I call them MWEs) at the start of football season. I require the attendance of my extended family at the Warren house in the Woods for our small town football season opener at home. It’s a weekend of chaos and eating and campfires by the lake, and touch football in the backyard (although my daughter seems to think it’s TACKLE MOM football.  I limped for three days).

The highlight, however, is the Big Game. Seeing my boys (I have 2 football stars this year), run out onto the field in their gear, high-fiving their dad (the dads line up at the gate and make this cool football tunnel) makes a mom’s heart swell.  I don’t care (well, not so much) if they win. Just that they took the field. And left all they had there.

This year, for the MWE game, we lost. It was a tough game against a team 3X our size (in players). They aren’t in our conference. They might not even be in our state.  I think I saw Burt Reynolds playing QB. No wait, that was Adam Sandler. Or both.

Anyway, they had us down by 3 touchdowns at the half. When our boys charged out after the mid-game pep talk, however, they were revved to go. They picked up the ball and roared downfield for a score!

I got a little excited. So, I grabbed my cowbell and went wild in the stands (One can always use more cowbell).  Only after the excitement died down did I realize…

I was wounded.

The cowbell has these little metal places on the top where it scrubbed off the skin of my knuckles.

Wounds.  Football wounds.  But you know, that’s just how we football fans roll.

Like I said, it was a tough game. We lost, Quite-A-Few-6.

These people helped balm the pain.

But this week we won.

(That’s Pete, our Running Back on the Left, and Noah, our Scary Defensive End on the Right)

I now wear mittens to the game. Because the cowbell is going to get a lot more use.

Go Cook County Vikings!