prematurely grey

It’s time to return to some sort of normal life. But for a life-long Yankees fan to say that life today is normal, well, that would be a lie. There is nothing normal about the residual pain of choking. Your throat is scratched. Your windpipe aches. Swallowing constricts that narrow passage again and the memory of the choke snaps back from the mind to the scene of the poorly chewed hot dog.I guess it should come as no surprise that The New York Times isn’t using the word “choke” in its analysis of WHAT WENT WRONG. I probably have to head to the blogosphere or Red Sox Nation if I want to hear or see the right word used. “Collapse” seems too technical; it’s a word I now associate almost exclusively with the Twin Towers (as they were always called while I was growing up). And just yesterday I read that structure wasn’t the culprit there.

As for the Yankees Choke, I had to put down the paper and come in here when I read the Derek Jeter knows that this team isn’t the same team it once was. This team may not even be my team. My team had the stricken Paul O’Neill and the incredibly eyelashed Tito Martinez. I loved that team.

Being a Yankees fan means being hated. I know that. But it might be time to extend that understanding a bit. Sometimes, good friends of mine call me a Yankee, simultaneously insulting me and reminding me that I will always be an outsider. They don’t hate me personally, but they sure can’t stand the fact that I’m a nice, funny, nearly Southern Yankee.

And there it is: Southerners can’t stand Yankees. My own mother, in her moments of deepest rage, screamed, “You…are… YANKEE CHILDREN!” at my brother and me. That’s my mother we’re talking about.

I don’t understand why the Democratic Party doesn’t understand this. Southerners hate Yankees. Now, I realize that electoral equations tell us that Kerry can win without the South, but after the past seventy years of migration and air conditioning, the South has risen again and it’s everywhere but Red Sox Nation. Our culture, our speech, our eating patterns have become Southern. And that’s not just a foundling daughter of the South talking. It’s true.

How could we pretend that our nation can embrace this affront to the South? Come on, Carter and Clinton are two examples of classic Southern males. So’s W. I think it’s time for everybody to start thinking about choking and wake the fuck up. If Kerry wins, thanks be to God. If he loses, will the fucking powers that be in the Democratic Party please start reading this blog?