\u00a0 \u00a0 Editor\u2019s note: This column is being reprinted from Jan. 18, 2006. It was the heyday of the Peyton Manning Indianapolis Colts, though this individual game ended in the playoff loss. A year later, they won the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 Thanks to the Colts, I got some work done this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 That wasn\u2019t the original plan.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 The original plan was to sit in my favorite chair, put my feet up, munch on some pistachios, and watch the Colts rack up another win on their way to the inevitable Super Bowl that all of us have been banking on for months.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 And then the game started.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 The Steelers \u2014 looking weirdly like the Colts at times \u2014 took command on their first possession, marching down the field to a touchdown. Then the Colts \u2014 looking weirdly like most of their opponents this season \u2014 sputtered on offense and were forced to punt.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 The sense of impending doom, the feeling that we were watching a slow-motion train wreck couldn\u2019t be shaken.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 Like a kid who runs from the room when something scary happens on television, I started getting busy with other projects, watching the game with only a fraction of my attention.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 My favorite chair was no longer comfortable, so I sat on the floor and started sorting and filing the hundreds of snapshots that have accumulated over the years. (The best ones are in albums, but like most families we have way too many photos in the house.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 That occupied most of the first half, long enough for the Steelers to score again and for the Colts to show uncharacteristic inability to convert on third down.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 Sensing my nervous energy over the game, my wife started adding to my chores. With the photos sorted, I started going through a pile of old sweaters unloaded from a closet.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 Keeping one eye on the Colts, I figured out which ones I might wear again and which ones should go to Goodwill.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 By the time I was finished, it was halftime and things weren\u2019t looking good for the boys in blue. I called Sally in Bloomington.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 She, too, was having trouble watching and had decided to get some work done on her computer, watching an online text version of the play-by-play at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 Photos and sweaters sorted, I walked the dog and came back hoping that the third quarter would be different.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 It wasn\u2019t, and I soon needed another distraction.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 So while the Colts kept trying \u2014 by fits and starts \u2014 to get back into the game, I started on the family CD collection. You\u2019d be amazed how many of the things can be accumulated, and it\u2019s often hard to find the one you\u2019re looking for. (Reading the titles on the edge of CD cases is a real challenge when you have bifocals.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 Connie was equally jumpy about the game, coming and going from the room. I\u2019m not sure what she thought when she came back in to find me stacking up CDs all over the place, putting classical in one pile, rhythm and blues in another, jazz in another, and rock in several others.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 By the fourth quarter, I was done, though I\u2019d been interrupted by intense sections of the game that held my interest \u2014 and boosted my hopes \u2014 for several minutes at a time.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 There was only one more thing to sort: Socks.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 I moved to the bedroom and another TV set. Warm socks, sweat socks, dress socks, socks with holes in them that for some reason I haven\u2019t thrown out, there were soon piles of them on the bed as I watched the game out of the corner of my eye.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 There was even a pile of oddball socks: A pair of battery-operated electric socks that employees gave me when we first went to Moldova, a pair of argyles that had never been worn, and a pair featuring the likeness of the Tasmanian Devil which should never have been made in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 The Colts and I finished about the same time, though the sock sorting job lacked the excitement and the heartbreak of the final seconds of the game.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 Sad as I am to see Indianapolis defeated, it may be a good thing.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 I\u2019m not sure I could come up with enough chores to get me through another game like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 \u00a0 Editor\u2019s note: This column is being reprinted from Jan. 18, 2006. It was the heyday of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2059],"tags":[265,648,647,5453,5458,2005,7,636,2004,392,2381,122,6,47682,47359,1797,84,47357,1890,47358,8083,632,635,505,638],"class_list":["post-693184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indianapolis-colts","tag-american-football","tag-american-football-bowls","tag-american-football-competitions","tag-american-football-finals","tag-american-football-playoffs","tag-colts","tag-football","tag-gridiron-football-variants","tag-indianapolis","tag-indianapolis-colts","tag-indianapoliscolts","tag-national-football-league","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-competitions","tag-nfl-franchise-relocations","tag-nfl-playoff-games","tag-nfl-playoffs","tag-nfl-seasons","tag-nfl-teams","tag-nfl-teams-seasons","tag-peyton-manning","tag-seasons-in-american-football","tag-seasons-in-american-sport","tag-super-bowl","tag-team-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}