Sundays Are for Church and Football

We have this family friend, Father George, a retired Catholic priest.  He and my grandmother met when he moved into the senior living center where she lived and they were immediately thick as thieves.  When she passed away, he basically adopted the rest of us, and now he's family.  He shows up for dinner on Sundays and one night, I found him standing on my porch at nine o'clock bringing us dessert.  I was very appreciative after my heart rate returned to normal.

Even though he's officially retired, he is the priest on call to say Mass for the visiting NFL teams when they come in town.  You can imagine how Chris salivates over being one Kevin Bacon away from his football heroes.  Well, today, Fr. George invited Chris to tag along to Mass with the Baltimore Ravens.  You would have thought he was a 7 year old on Christmas morning, and he was.  Until he found out he'd have to get up at 5:30 AM to meet up with Fr. George, get to the hotel, and set up.  Sorry, my little night owl.  Welcome to my world.

Up he got and off he went.  He came back happy and full (they fed him, and apparently professional football players eat filet mignon for breakfast).  He had been determined to be on his best behavior and not fan boy all over the place, but toward the end, he lost his cool when shaking hands with head coach John Harbaugh and asked to take a selfie (if you're going to go, might as well go big).  Coach kindly agreed, and that's when Chris realized he didn't have his phone in his pocket.  Whoops.

As the team files out to get ready for the game, Coach came over to Chris and Father to say goodbye, and graciously offered to take that selfie (Chris has left it in his jacket pocket across the room).  Even though Chris isn't the best photographer, at least he has evidence of his happy little morning.  (But he's still not rooting for the Ravens.)