They Could Feel It Coming, All Right...

Having watched the Steelers lose to the better team this past Super Bowl Sunday, I was struck by a few interesting things. First of all, Mike Tomlin, head coach for the Steelers, plays the song In The Air Tonight for his team as a type of focus exercise the night before really big games. An urban legend I have heard (one a close friend swore to be true) was that Phil Collins wrote that song to express how he felt at having witnessed a man watch a woman drown from the high window of a hotel room. The truth of the myth behind the song is irrelevant to me in this case. I just found it ironic that such a well-known indictment of mysogyny is the pep song for Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

The other thing I found interesting is that I actually have a Terrible Towel, complete with trademark stamp and legit lettering. I have had this since I can remember. It was my bath towel as a scamp. My grandmother tells a story of having found a white towel washed up on the shore of Lake Superior near Traverse City in Michigan. The family used to vacation there. Apparently, she took the towel, cleaned it up, and gave it to her son, my uncle to use. Years later, I must have come across it and liked it, and so it was handed down to me. The thing that is weird is that I have looked at all the official sites that describe the history of the Terrible Towel, and none of them indicate that there was ever a white towel with yellow lettering and black outline made. And yet, this is what I have. The concept itself apparently came into existence as a marketing gimmick in 1975, the year I was born. It is possible this was a very early prototype of the current towel, one perhaps not mass-produced, and so mostly forgotten about. Likely, someone used it to sun themselves upon and left it for the waves to soggy up shortly before my grandmother came upon it. I, however, like to imagine that it was tossed into lake Erie after having been carried to the Northwestern corner of Pennsylvania. Perhaps a lover made a wish and cast it out. I like to think it traveled through the great lakes, up Huron, rounding the entire Eastern coast of the lower peninsula until it came to rest near my family's beach spot. I may never know the true story of the towel, and that is a terrible shame.

This has been brought to you under the influence of Shiner Bock. If you haven't had one recently, do so.