Peter Grimm Headwear

Sara wearing Peter Grimm Headwear
Originally uploaded by brookpifer.

Sara is so freaking cute you wish you could bottle it and save it for later.

http://petergrimm.com

One For The Thumb

Pittsburgh Steelers
Originally uploaded by brookpifer.

By no means am I a football expert. For the past month I have been calling my Dad asking him numerous questions such as “What’s a blitz” or “What makes special teams special.” That may be surprising considering the household I grew up in. It was in a small middle class town 80 miles north of Pittsburgh. For 18 years I lived with the worlds biggest Steeler fan, my Dad. A tough guy that was brought to tears by the implosion of Three Rivers Stadium. A man that has been on the Steelers season ticket wait list for over 10 years. When a slot finally opened up he found a way to purchase them, even though money was tight at the time. I can confidently say that my Mom’s love of the Steelers helped my parents stay together for the past 30 years.

Sunday’s were holy in my parents house during football season. Before every game my Dad would construct his shrine to the Steelers. His bright yellow Terrible Towel lay perfectly flat and symmetrical over the arm of the recliner. You could be certain that at least one week of grounding would be awarded to the offspring that touched it in a disrespectfull manner. Even though the furnace was running on high he still put on two Steeler shirts and a Steeler stocking cap. And his MGD was kept cool in his very own Steeler beer bottle holder. But the collecting of anything associated with THE GREATEST FOOTBALL TEAM IN THE WORLD doesn’t stop there. I could easily type 500 pages detailing just 1% of my Dad's Steeler memorabilia. But I eventually have to get back to work...so the story continues.

I was not into football, so my Sunday’s were spent with headphones strapped to my head pounding alternative rock into my skull. I needed to drown out the vocal stylings my Dad would pummel at the tv when the Steelers weren’t playing up to their abilities.

Finally I was off to college, never to watch another football game for as long as I lived. Sports Center and the cheesy intro music were no longer a part of my life…so I thought. I was going to college in downtown Pittsburgh and could not help but get sucked into the air of excitement that infiltrated the lungs of everyone. Pittsburgh was in the AFC playoffs! We had a theme song that could be heard on every elevator, every car passing by, every store you went into. Except the coffee shop I worked at. So the weekend of the playoff game against the Colts I smuggled a radio to work. By the end of my shift and the end of the game most of the Ross Park Mall employees were hanging out with me, cheering the Steelers on through the AM broadcast. They won and were on their way to the Super Bowl…FREE COFFEE FOR EVERYONE! Sadly though, The Steel Curtain fell at the hands of a bunch of Cowboys.

That’s it, I swore off football - it's too heartbreaking. How do people take it? I posed that question to my Dad, a man that has shades of black and gold running though his veins. “I've loved the Steelers before you were born and I will love them till the day I die. People who can’t take the good with the bad jump on the bandwagons of whoever is winning. That isn’t what it means to love a team.”

By 2000 I am living in Florida, far away from the overcast brutal cold that frequents western Pennsylvania. It's AFC playoff time for the Steelers against the Patriots. I've not watched one football game since the loss in the Super Bowl, so I watch it, and yet again a heartbreaking loss, not just for the Steelers, but also for my Dad.

Now its official, I have come to the conclusion that I jinx the Steelers. Now this year they go for an impressive/amazing 15-1. After each win I read the game recap and get verbal highlights from my Dad (and Sports Center). When it came down to the title game against the Jets this past weekend, I had still not watched one single football game, let alone a Steeler game since the loss to the Patriots. My Mom insisted that I give up on this silly jinx theory because I am missing some spectacular football. Friday night before the game I get a phone call from my Dad instructing me to wave my Terrible Towel at 4:35. To his shock I don’t own one. I told him all my towels are girly. He asked if I had anything yellow in my closet. All my clothes are black. He said wave something black around and WATCH THE GAME. My Dad went on to tell me that my superstition had nothing to do with weather they would win or loose. He insisted that I needed to watch them, that they need my support too.

And I did! At 4:35 my fiancée and I ran around our loft waving black t-shirts and singing praises of support for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Two missed field goals gave Pittsburgh chance they needed to win. Some people may say they are lucky that guy in green missed them, but they would be wrong. Luck had nothing to do with it. Had the stellar Steelers D given them just one more inch of field position it would have been a different story. The Jets didn’t loose the game, the Steelers WON THE GAME! Say it with me now, THE STEELERS WON THE GAME! Jinx broken. I called my parents right away to tell them I finally watched the game. My Dad and my Mom were singing the Pittsburgh fight song in unison. "Here we go PITTSBURGH, HERE WE GO!”

After many words we are finally at the reason for this letter. To the TEAM of THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS I humbly request this, don’t break my Dad’s heart. His faith in you may be biased, but its unwavering. Call his cell phone and listen to his greeting if you don’t believe me. Go to his computer room if you don’t have faith in these words. He has faith in you guys that can’t be measured because it is bigger than infinity itself. Forget about home field advantage; forget about terms like underdog and championship. If you can go out there and play your best, what you men are capable of, what you have deep down inside, I KNOW you won’t break his heart.


P.S. HERE WE GO PITTSBURGH, HERE WE GO!!