Usually it's just the first sentence. Sometimes it's the one that comes after. It's never the last one.
The hardest thing about writing a weekly column shifts with the calendar. It's always a moving target and the target is vapor. Sometimes all you've got when you sit in front of the computer is a feeling. And if you scratch, it might disappear.
So this is one of those weeks. It might be the aftermath of the Travis-Taylor bowl last Sunday. Or it might be from seeing Meat & Tater kissing on the front porch on Valentine's Day.
But it seems there's a bunch of love in the air and I just have to point it out. It started last Sunday when some of the terminally offended were calling for a boycott of the Woke Bowl. Those calls led to the game's largest viewership ever. While there was a football game going on, there was also a love story with a perfect ending: hugs, kisses and a trophy.
I was still trying to clear my head of it on Wednesday, aka Valentine's Day, when I came out of the house to be greeted by Meat & Tater on the front porch participating in some serious pda. They were loud, as usual.
"Come over here SJ, take a look at these roses Meat got me." She was holding a bouquet of roses alright. The roses were different colors, but none were red. There was yellow and white, pink and purple. There were orange and green roses. Even a couple of black ones.
I stepped up on the porch, figuring they were silk or some other artificial style but immediately was struck by the rose aroma. Tater thrust the bunch in my face. "They're real!" she exclaimed.
I could tell, there were thorns in there. I was also totally questioning the "Let's make this Waffle House a Waffle Home" card I got for Val.
Meat looked pretty smug with himself. "Where in the world did you get those?" I asked.
"Top secret old buddy, you're going to have to find your own perfect Valentine's Day present."
Tater smiled at Meat, "They really are perfect baby. A rainbow of roses!"
Meat was well ahead of her. "You've got to listen to your woman SJ." Tater shot him a quick look that softened. "I mean, you've got to pay attention to your partner. Tater said she didn't like red roses. The rest was just research."
"I gotta say that's pretty impressive Meat. I didn't see the UPS truck, you must have gone for a drive."
"He left the house at 6 this morning, got back at 3 with roses and that." She pointed to a heart shaped box the size of a wide screen TV propped against the door.
"Well," I was speechless, "that's really impressive."
"You gotta love love SJ." Meat beamed. Tater beamed. Pretty soon, I was beaming.
Hard not to feel good when there's so much love and affection in the air. Reckon that's what all those Swifties are high on? I could think of worse.