Backwards Roles

Years ago when Mitch and I met and married my mother noticed something right away about her youngest daughter and new husband and took pleasure in laughing about.
Soon after we married, and moved to Mom's in Washington state, I became pregnant with our first child and set about crocheting blankets, hate and booties. Now, I learned to crochet at 12 in Home Economics in 7th grade. I made some goofy looking stocking thing and a pot holder, single layer so it burned the hands of any user.
But I enjoyed the art and learned a few new stiitches from friends later on in life. By the time I married I had a decent command of the hook art, though nothing fancy came of it. When I married I began crocheting again and my new husband decided he wanted to learn. I taught him the 'granny square' and set him up with his own materials. Lo and behold, he made the booties and hat set our new daughter wore from the hospital nearly a year later. He also helped my mother make a tiny green and yellow varigated hat/sweater set and they began another in pinks, purples and white that wasn't by the time we returned to Oklahoma. My mom would finish it and send both to us when time for the baby arrived. Sadly, she passed away just a month after we left at age 46 and never finished the second sweater. My sister brought it to me after the funeral and Mitch finished it for her and my baby got to wear it in the end.

But what was so funny Mom laughed is while I had taught my husband to crochet and I slowed down on it. I was wrapped up in my football games, primarily Oklahoma U and Dallas Cowboys, while hubby made baby clothes. Mom asked if we realized we were backwards and we laughed. Yep. We knew. He wasn't a big sports fan and I was a huge football fan and loved to play (soft)baseball. He's never been one to weight lift, I loved my little white dumbbells. Never liked basketball and the only game I ever went to was one of my friends' games in highschool.

I grew up watching NASCAR and wrestling with my dad. Actually sat through a whole Indy 500 with intense rapture. My dad loved it, so did I. I fell from that one after I grew up and left home because, unlike women who let husbands watch any and all sports, my husband didn't like sports on the tv 24-7. And he's a real sci-fi geek and loves the tv!
Over the years I slipped from my sports more and more, but never completely. Always tried to catch Superbowl at least and the World Series, and anything rodeo I could get to, or find. I rode in big rodeo grand entry parades with my sister, and usually on horses we had spent the previous 2-6 weeks breaking ourselves, which once almost ended with me under the rearing hooves of a panicked one I was on. Sis came back, held up the parade in front of hundreds of people (mostly laughing) and led my horse from the arena. Not my best moment, but getting dumped off a horse I had broke would've been worse! As it was, my dad din't let me live that down for a while.

Anyway, today something brought back all the memories of my parents' attitudes toward my enjoyment of sports (which I rarely actually participated in ever).
Mitch was surfing for something to watch on tv and gave me two choices. A western and a 'kid' show. I told him to pick, I'm writing on my latest wip today. So he flipped channels and my ears perked right up before he quickly moved on. "Hey, leave it there!" I called and went running to the living room. "Why do you think I changed it so fast? It's on 129 of 500 freakin laps! And I ain't watching NAS-TY-CAR!"
Drat and more Drat! He's not a NASCAR fan either.

So I'm back at the computer while he watches the 'kid' show and I relive memories of my mom laughing at how backwards my darling husband and I are.
For the record, he owns more crochet yarn and hooks than I do these days and watches golf and football, and the occasional World Series. I have my horse and I've traded dumbbells for a laptop. My dreams and ambitions of riding in rodeos and watching sexy men play ball have switched gears these days, to writing about the sexy men who do those things and loving women who do, or watch them do it.

What's so odd to me about this scene today is that not long ago I was telling friend and wonderful author, Michele Dunaway--who writes NASCAR series for Harlequin American Romance--that though I used to watch the races, I'm not actually a fan these days. I don't get into them, haven't watched one in just about forever. It just doesn't appeal anymore.

Then a couple of months ago I caught a race (don't recall where/which) and loved it. Now I realize it does appeal to me still. To think I actually gave away two tickets, I'd won on the radio, to a male friend of my daughter to meet those hot and sexy drivers in Pleasanton, Ca before we moved! <kick, kick>
But I realized something more today. That, after my dad passed in 1988, I haven't got my NASCAR Buddy anymore and just haven't watched it since. It's no fun to watch it alone and so I fell out of the habit of watching at all. It's not that I don't like it anymore! Now if I can get husband to go back to bed.... Of course he did compromise.

He said I can watch the final 20 laps (all I have to do is catch them in time, and hope his show is over by then). Lol