Pain and the Manning Brothers

by ethan risinger

The last time that the Colts won I was slurping orange juice with my family coughing out large wads of conjecture about the Manning brothers.

My grandmother waxing, leaning even into the shakes in the earthquakeish washing she’s doing to the nachos, tongue lovingly combing the topography of her blue corn chip, instead of just chomping, like everyone else, her fingers, voice, stretching with a squiggle like a rope ladder.

My brother Tommy, who really has no eyes worth talking about is sitting across the room. Shoulders down, spine like bent wire, making, carving, sweating over a joke about American liberalism in the form of a two point conversion.

It’s the first time in a long time That I think: “I don’t want to get old” that “I’m 22 with a now crescent moon shaped esophagus, waiting impatiently to put library magazine titles on magnet strips, and attach them to my car with Tommy’s help while he eats barley chips with queso on them.” This is what making time for family is.

Even Tommy, makes me wonder which Manning sibling is better, even he convinces me in toto to collapse my ballerina knees and twist into the shattered television outside to play-act the end of the fourth quarter like a reporter that got Peyton and Eli mixed up.

“Peyton takes the pigskin an- wait is Peyton the blonde one? They’re both blonde? What’s his number? Shoot- uh, uh The Colts are staying formidable this year!”

Then Tommy clears his throat, the sound of a truck’s air brake, and says loud in a voice of a commentator, like a brick, being thrown against a brick wall: “Oh Eli comes rearing past the 50! The 40! The 30! The Unalienable Rights of the Individual! The 20! The 10! The Red Zone! Touchdown!” I don’t laugh, because I don’t get it, and because I got hyped up too, and hit my head on the ceiling of the laminate tv box, most kinds of pain can kill laughter.

Tommy drops his arms from their field goal position, “Who names their kid Peyton? Sounds like a horse girl name” and its bad, but I laugh very hard all at once, and cut my palm on the toothed glass of the televisions interior, but for some reason I keep laughing.