It's Back

I never forgot you

Back in the summer of 1991 when I was supposed to have finished college, my father, the original Redskins fan named Ben Folsom, gave me a Redskins rocking chair, it was in sincerity the only thing to which I was truly attached in that period of life when everything you own will fit into a Ford Escort.

This piece of Redskins paraphernalia accompanied me through two residences in Charlottesville Virginia, waited patiently for me three years while I toured the nation as a rock band sound engineer, moved back into my parents' house with me for a while then came with me to Arlington Virginia for three moves before accompanying me to my current residence in Alexandria.

It is unequivocally the most comfortable piece of furniture I have ever sat on to watch football or play video games, the Redskins rocker got me through many 3:00 am games of Madden 92, 93, 94 and 95 and every Redskins game for more than a decade.

The Redskins rocker finally failed me in January 2006. A week after the surgical strike on Tampa, when a high school friend and I were part of the rowdy Redskins contingent that used a compromised password to buy club seats at Buccaneers Stadium reserved for existing Tampa Bay season ticket holders, we flew in, partied hard, saw the Redskins win a tough game 17-10 with no Santana Moss, no offense and Sean Taylor ejected for spitting on Michael Pittman and flew back all in twenty-two hours, the Redskins were playing the Seattle Seahawks in the Divisional playoff round.

Well we all know the Redskins lost that game and in addition to the 2005 season, a collateral casualty of that game was my beloved Redskins chair, the upper vertical support came away from the rear riser, the screw broke clean off in the seat.

Well life and other things conspired to separate me from my rocker and for the last four years it has sat in the shed or in the back of the pantry, closed in and obscured by the rag bag, paint supplies and the tie dye bucket.

I always knew it was an easy fix, let me tell you folks I am that lazy, I abandoned the one piece of Redskins gear to which I was most bonded as an adult Redskins fan, I do not know how it happened, in retrospect I suppose the number 89 Santana Moss jersey I bought specifically to wear to that Tampa Bay playoff game, I had never owned a team jersey of any type before that game in my life, became my new Redskins avatar and I let the chair go like a kid growing out of an old toy, once the favorite and now too familiar.

My wife, a football fan herself with a clear understanding of what that chair meant to me, gave me a year to fix it, then began pleading for me to let it go and move on, there would be other rockers, other opportunities to associate my direct physical comfort with the football team that has been the only one I cared about my entire life. I filibustered and it was stashed.

Two weeks ago, when our three kids, ages eight, eight and three, were away in Fredericksburg at Camp Wilbert Montgomery, an annual affair that will reverse in two weeks when lifetime Eagles fan, season ticket holder and Curly R reader/lurker Wilbert Montgomery's two kids come to stay with us for a week, we did what every married couple with young kids does when their children are out of town... CLEAN LIKE BUNNIES (hey, what did you think I was going to say?)

We re-orged the pantry from bottom to top and I found the chair. Tonight, with the wife out having fun with her friends and after all the kids were out, I finally did what I should have done four years ago: I fixed the damn thing.

In the end, it took five minutes, I drilled a pilot hole above the existing slot, the one with half the screw still in it, then sank a wood screw in and voila, my Redskins rocker is back. I sit in it as I write this post. It is Curly R's new home and my old one.

It is funny how things work, I can get motivated to raise a family, get to work every day, have a social life and find the time to publish nearly 1300 pieces on my little blog, I could never take five minutes to fix my Redskins rocker. Now it is like I am home again.



Photos by me.