Bummer.
I started to think about what it was like, being an NFL lineman. Very large, incredibly strong men trying to incapacitate, for a few brief moments, other very large, strong men.
And to do it play after play for 60 minutes. Wow. You'd have to be tough.
Very tough.
I nod to the Elixir of Knowledge sitting on the little coffee table by the Chair.
"Ya gotta be tough, eh?"
The Elixir isn't much of a conversationalist.
But I have to talk to the Elixir. TechnoBoy, strapped into headphones, is currently part of a planet-wide battle online and the Wife is taking a nap, waiting for Downton Abbey at 8 o'clock.
Yep. Just me, the Elixir, and the NFL.
It is now the next afternoon, about 22 hours later, and I'm at the Library using one of their computers.
As I lean back and stretch, the Librarian walks by with a pot of coffee for the "Appreciation Table".
She's almost 80 years old and is bigger than the coffee pot beat by about 11 inches and 15 lbs. She moves about with a huge smile and a methodical glaciar-like swiftness, her sharp mind light-years faster than her body.
And she is tough. Very tough.
Earlier this winter, we had some freezing rain.
Just glare ice everywhere.
She went home to her house out on a little, distant lake. No neighbors but trees for about a half-mile. She pulled up to a dark house, the hubby having passed on years ago.
As she walked to the front door, she hit ice and went down.
Hard.
Very hard.
She laid there semi-concious in below freezing weather for awhile - she couldn't remember how long.
She started to come around as the pain subsided to just "intense". She fished around in her coat for the cellphone she very rarely uses.
It was dead.
She found her house key and dragged her self up the sidewalk. She grit her teeth and pulled herself up to unlock the door, falling across the threshold as it swung in, fanning the pain back to a searing, burning intensity.
Minutes passed. She crawled inside enough to almost close the door. She crawled down the hallway towards the phone.
That's when she passed out.
The next morning she came to, lying in a very cold hallway, the front door standing just barely open.
She slowly crawled the rest of the way to the phone, crying out in pain as she reached up to knock the phone to the floor.
But it's a happy ending. The good guys came in time. She healed up after awhile and is now back to work, smiling at folks, and bringing us hot pots of the Elixir of Knowledge.
She walks methodically back past me, flashing a beaming smile.
I smile and nod.
Then I realize something.
I'm nodding to one of the toughest people I've met in a long time.
Too bad she doesn't play football-
she would've made a heck of a tailback.