Standing Up For The Rams

I'm very protective of my team. I know where they stand right now. I went to every home game last year. I watched every away game on TV. I'm well aware.

The other night was 40 cent wing night at Culpepper's, a local bar and grill type place here in St. Louis. Normally wing night is very popular and Culpepper's is packed both in the restaurant and at the bar where you pick up the to-go orders, but this night it was freezing outside, I think it was 14 degrees or something insane like that, and people were staying home. Not me though. I didn't want to cook that night.

So I walk in to pick up my order and there are two other people at the bar, a woman doing some sort of paperwork which seemed odd and a guy obviously waiting for his order wearing a Denver Broncos jacket. This makes me crazy. If you are from out of town and you are wearing your team's jacket, fine. But if you're waiting for an order at Culpepper's, on wing night, in icy cold weather where you have to walk carefully so you won't slip, you live here and you should be wearing a Rams jacket. Period.

So, I sidle up to the guy and say kind of sideways, "You know, we have an NFL team in this city too". He turns and he looks at me kind of sheepishly and says that yeah, he likes the Rams but they were so hard to watch and he really likes Tim Tebow and thus the jacket. He seems like a nice guy and he does have a point about the Rams being hard to watch but that does not excuse the jacket. So we start to talk about the team and how we're worried about Sam Bradford because he took such a beating this year and hope he's not been permanently psychologically damaged. We talk about what a treasure Steven Jackson is and will be. I plugged Craig Dahl because he's my favorite Ram. We talk about the Edward Jones Dome and where we like to sit and we agree that it's fun to sit in the end zone even though it seems like it wouldn't be. I tell him how I met Torry Holt and how nice he was to me and how we hugged. (Yep, I hugged Torry Holt.) We talked about the Rams, we talked about the Rams, we wondered where our wings were and we talked about the Rams some more.

Finally Steve the bartender appeared with our respective orders. As we made our way out the door and shuffled carefully to our cars I suggested he buy himself a Rams jacket and helpfully mentioned that they should be pretty cheap right now. He said he thought he might. We parted ways and I stepped cautiously the last few feet to my car. It was very cold but I felt warm because I had wings for dinner and felt I had brought a fan back into the fold.