What The Bills Taught Me About Podcasts

 A podcast friend recently asked me what sound reminded me of my childhood (among a few other, very promising prompting questions). As I thought about this, I couldn’t really think of a precise sound. I felt pulled through sensations, of the crunch of hard snow in the dead of winter, the sound of a dog sniffing for his spot in the brisk air. It was the sound of my grandfather’s laugh, the tree frogs in the backyard, but nothing enveloped me in a sense of childhood. It just left me feeling a soft homesickness. 

I contemplated this question as I settled in for a Sunday meal prep a few weeks ago. At the same time I had the Bills game on.  As the CBS NFL Sunday theme music played from across my apartment, I stopped cold. That was it. The sound that reminded me of my childhood was essentially a professional sports jingle. 

I had to laugh. As I cooked up my burritos, I realized that it made sense. I grew up in a family devoted to the Buffalo Bills, and now being a fan of this team is so much more about a connection to home than it is about the game of football. I’ve never been to a game in person, and I have little desire to. For me, watching the game isn’t just about the sport - it’s about who I’m with when I’m watching it. Throughout my childhood, it was routine, it was comfort, and it was the backdrop to everything about growing up. I sat on the floor of my grandparents’ living room with my back against the couch my mom was sitting on. My homework was in my lap, and the sounds of my family cheering on the Bills was the soundtrack of my Sundays. It was sometimes comforting, at times sometimes suffocating, but always there.

It made me realize that I was already primed to be a podcast listener. I wrote recently about what I can’t do when I’m listening to podcasts, but that’s my adult brain that gets overloaded way faster than it once did. When I was younger, I have to say I didn’t care much about the game. For the most part, I had to go. Granted, I liked to go because there was always food, but football was background noise. When I was going through most of my formative years, the Buffalo Bills were not great. Yet, every Sunday, there was my family. Yelling at the tv, laughing about life, and I was there listening as I did my homework, or read my books. I could do that, and because I could tune myself in and out of the game by my family’s reactions - I knew when a game started to get good, when it was getting hopeful, or usually, when we just weren’t up to snuff as a team. 

Now, I can listen to the football game and make breakfast burritos. I can clean my house and listen to podcasts.  This thing I used to do out of necessity, I now do naturally. Every day, I balance tuning into the moments of what I’m doing with my hands and what I’m listening to with my ears.

Then there’s the now of it all that still teaches me about podcasts, and what I do here. The current Quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, and proud husband to the talented Hailee Steinfeld - he’s incredibly gifted as an athlete. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t become Josh Allen by not being physically talented. That’s only half of the puzzle, though. The other thing that footaball has taught me about podcasting? Don’t give up. Adjust your play, your angle, your routine until you figure out what makes you blend with your team well enough to get to where the MVP is. That’s not even a joke. It’s a reminder.

We’re not all going to be Josh Allen, even if we’re talented. Even if we’re good at things. What we need is the delusion of sending your film, personally, to a thousand college coaches. To then receive nothing in response until someone happened to watch you, when arriving to watch someone else. It’s maybe finding someone to push forward because you see something in them, and you know that your advocacy can change things. 

It’s a type of life lesson, the way that the quiet things, the small things shape us. Josh Allen and I are the same age, nearly to the day. When he was getting started in Buffalo, when I first realized that the city’s hopes were resting on the shoulders of someone my age - I started to feel quietly protective. More recently, we even got married within months of each other. There’s nothing in our lives that connect us other than these three things, Buffalo, our year of birth, and our year of being wed. It’s a superficial parasocial thing – but it gave me a perspective, and my need for a bit of well-founded delusion.

 Yet it’s the small things that shape us, the ones that make me look at football and say it paved the way for me to incorporate podcasts into my life. It’s growing up witnessing the dedication of a grandmother who never turned her back on the team during those 17 years, because I watched her watch nearly every game. It tells me that to get so far, it’s not just talent, it’s not just natural gift, but it’s also the delusion of belief. After watching a season of Hard Knocks it’s also a reminder that we’ve got to have our lives be about more than our jobs. We can make pizza, live for our pets, and if our finances support it - drift very expensive cars.

I knit. I paint. I play DnD. I have a job away from all this. My passion is writing, it’s that thing that weaves itself in and out of all of aspects of my life. What I need to be reminded of is being that little bit delusional so that this can become something that gives me more than a humming satisfaction. Maybe if I’m a little delusional, it might become more, and I’ll still be able to knit, and paint, and play DnD. Hopefully, someday my job can be some mixture of writing and podcasts. Maybe, just maybe. 

As I finish writing this up, I’m grateful for every ounce I can get out of this life that I weave in and out of podcasts. As the Bills take the field tonight, and I watch it from my couch, I’ll be reminded to be a little more persistent and a whole lot more delusional. 

As always, thanks for reading. Be good.  Do good. Go Bills.

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