Three cheers for Maalox Monday

Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

While everyone knows that Super Bowl Sunday should be a national holiday, there should also be a groundswell of support for the following two days as well -- Maalox Monday and Tums Tuesday. Those two days, as Super Sunday partiers know, can be so unforgiving, nobody should have to go to work as they dig out from Sunday's activities.

On Super Sunday last week, I tried to lay to rest the age-old question of men everywhere -- can a man survive eating only buffalo chicken wings, drinking nothing more than beer and doing nothing but watching football for one 24-hour period?

The answer, as I found out, is a resounding, "No." That's because you also have to include about 10 bowls of pasta salad. Then you can do it.

As fun as Super Bowl Sunday is, however, Maalox Monday comes right on its heels. You can look into the eyes of any real football fan come Maalox Monday Morning and immediately diagnose the situation. It's part physical, but an even bigger part of the symptoms are psychological.

The physical symptoms of Maalox Monday are obvious -- the grumbling of the stomach as it tries to digest four dozen chicken wings and those 10 mandatory bowls of pasta salad, the headache as those Sunday beers take their toll and the inability to eat anything that even smells like a deviled egg.

The psychological symptoms can be even worse.

There is no more football for half a year, and even a casual fan -- the one who only ate two dozen wings and five bowls of pasta salad on Sunday -- will find that hard to live with.

Once you begrudgingly get through Maalox Monday, Tums Tuesday arrives. The major grumblings in the stomach are gone, but there are still enough doubts that you avoid all greasy food until at least Wednesday. The smell of chicken wings is still present, mostly because you haven't showered since Sunday and the sauce is still smeared all over your nose. Tums is about the only thing you can eat that will satisfy those pangs in your stomach.

The psychological funk has given way to outright depression -- the Stanley Cup playoffs help, but there is no cure until preseason football begins.

Even sitting on the recliner isn't as satisfying as it was a week prior, when football season was still going strong.

Of course, it could be much worse. You could be like a good friend of mine, who skipped the Super Bowl entirely this year.

It seems that Maalox Monday came about 48 hours early for him, forcing him to miss the Super Bowl party as he tended to his "personal business" at home.

Evidently, the 20-mile drive to the Super Bowl party was deemed too risky in light of the problem. He'll have to live with that for the rest of his life, so making fun of him isn't necessary.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@

frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor. He won several "recreational" squares this Super Sunday.