About this time in the summer, I start to get antsy. Yes, the weather is warm, the kids are out of school, and it's time to relax. For most people, anyway. Cook-outs, lazy days by the pool, and cold beer...they all scream "summer is here" for the average mom. And I can enjoy these things, up to a point. But in the back of my mind, the clock has started to tick. I try to push the thoughts away, but they inevitably keep crowding back into my brain. Because while the lazy days of summer have definitely arrived, the countdown to kick-off for me has already begun.
I'm not talking about the start of the football season, at least not in the sense many people think of when that first whistle blows on the field and the games actually count. I'm talking about one of MY favorite times of the year: TRAINING CAMP!
Yup, I'm ready. Ready for the silence at Redskins Park to be broken. Ready for the heat and humidity to shimmer over the grassy fields, for the players to hose off their sweaty heads with those hose-nozzle contraptions they use during practice, for the live local radio coverage to begin. I'm ready for players whose names no one has ever heard of to take the field. I'm ready to watch 3rd-string quarterbacks to throw long, arching passes to 3rd and 4th-string receivers. I'm ready to root for underdog players who are long-shots to make the team, the ones the media trumps as the "hard-workers" and "character guys" most people know nothing about. I'm ready to stand in the baking sun with my binoculars up-close-and-personal with ten thousand other Redskin fans watching players stretching on the field. "One, Two, Three...huh. Two, Two, Three...HUH!"
I love it. Training camp is the REAL start of football season, at least for me. I love that day in late July when I turn on the news and they're showing footage of the players carrying their stereos and suitcases into some local hotel to begin their stay at camp...one of the oldest traditions in football. I love the guys carrying their clothes in a pillowcase, and the ones wearing those huge headphones and rocking their heads to the beat while refusing to acknowledge the cameras. I love turning on my local sports talk radio station in the car and hearing that first LIVE broadcast from Redskins Park!
Oh, the excitement...the expectation! Training camp is filled with promise, buoyed with the sense that everyone is starting over...that last year's horrible gaffes and major mistakes have all been forgiven and forgotten. Training camp is a fresh start, a new beginning, the dawning of a new day. It's a time for optimism. A time for good cheer. The past has been wiped away, and anything is possible. Who doesn't get excited about that??
I know, I know, it's ridiculous to start obsessing about training camp -- TRAINING CAMP -- where nothing actually counts and many players will be back bagging groceries and selling cars by fall, this early, but that is my lot in life and I have come to accept it. Every year, usually around Memorial Day, when everyone else is gearing up for summer vacation and splashing in the pool, I begin my quiet countdown. "How many more days until they release the training camp schedule? What days will I attend this year? Will there be morning AND evening practices?" I wonder. And I wait. And I surreptitiously check the Redskins website for tidbits of information so I can start planning, organizing, and cleaning off those binoculars...
About six weeks and counting -- the countdown has begun!
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