Monday Night Bengal Striped Fever!

The thing about Monday night football games is that they are on a Monday night... with Tuesday and the whole rest of the week happening far to early after a super late game.

So here I am last night at the game... having a great time with my gal pals in spite of a tough loss by my favorite team. 

I am the Monday night Bengal fan with the biggest striped fever... followed closely by Laura in terms of goofiness, but sitting with Kim and Erin who are completely and normally adorable as they cheer on our beloved Bengals. 

 It seems that I may have gotten a little bit over excited about my Bengals being all 8 and 0 yesterday and asked Jamie is he would paint some tiger stripes on my face to express my love and devotion to the Bengals. 

Jamie agreed it was a great idea and is also a really great artist. 

As he was painting on my tiger stripes, I was all happy and excited thinking I was going to have the coolest Bengal tiger stripes in our section and imagined all of my section friends greeting me with cool compliments like "nice face."

Then Laura came over and somehow we decided that Jamie should paint her face half orange and half black so that she could look all Bengal-ish and also I would look less crazy.

She claimed to have developed Stockholm syndrome and was sympathizing with her Bengal captors (me!) and continued to drop Patty Hearst references throughout the game. 

"I am not being starved, or beaten, or unnecessarily frightened..."
But really she was being a really super and kind friend for making me look a smidgen less wacky....or at least like I had company in my nuttiness. 

I was just happy and excited to have company in my paint your face and cheer for the Bengals fan club... and because Lilly loaned me her giant foam finger. 

While I imagined that I would have the coolest Bengal stripes in our section, I was absolutely correct. I had the best and only tiger stripes in our section. 

My pals and I arrived at the stadium and were a bit dismayed that more fans did not have their children paint stripes on their faces before the big Monday night game. 

We kind of expected a lot of  fellow fans complimenting our handiwork and saying things like "you have a cool face" but instead just about everyone else looked fabulously normal like my friend Robbin.   

It took me about 40 years of going to Bengal games to work up my tiger striped nerve...to go all in and paint my face in pure Bengal devotion.
 And so it pained me a bit that the Bengals broke their winning streak on the same day that I handed over my bengal heart and kind of a lot of my dignity.
But any and all Tuesday morning quarterbacks should remember that the Bengals remain 8-1 which is beyond awesome.
But the sadness of bearing a tough loss was tempered by the half time show... its hard to be crabby when the cowboy monkeys are in the house. I think that the only way to make them more entertaining would be to add tiny tiger stripes to their little naked faces.

Amazingly wonderful cowboy monkey photo credit to
Cara Owsley...Cincinnati Enquirer Photographer.