Football season is upon us — that cherished time of year when buffalo chicken and dip consumption skyrockets, college kids partake in the glorious yet debauched tradition of “tailgating,” and men start verbally assaulting referees through the TV screen, yelling things like, “That was a fucking foul” and “Interference!!!!!!!” And then there are the actual games, which are remarkably slow and often anticlimactic, and as a result, can feel interminable.
But as it turns out, there’s a way to watch any football game and not feel as if you’ve been subjected to three-plus hours of psychological torture. You just have to go into a game-watching experience with the same approach as comedian Jenny Slate, who shared her trick for not only enduring, but enjoying a football game in her new Netflix special, Stage Fright.
“I love football because I don’t like to watch it at all,” she says, “but I love to imagine things about it.”
Here’s what you have to do: See all those burly players on the field? Slate recommends you see them not as professional athletes, but instead as “men [who] have decided to be on a team, of course, because they’re best friends.” (We recommend taking it one step further: Imagine them as gentle little boys.) So much better already, right? It doesn’t end there:
Indeed! And when the players go to the locker room, it gets even more precious:
The best thing about this trick — imagining a group of men as little boys — is that once you master it, you can apply it any time you’re presented with a trying situation: while watching your partner’s intramural softball team, or even in a predominantly male meeting.