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"[T]here's no pong involved, it's not squidgy or anything like that."

I love this passage from Keith Richards's autobiography about keeping a pet  mouse in his pocket:

For companionship I kept pets. I had a cat and a mouse, Gladys. I would bring her to school and have a chat in the French lesson when it got boring. I'd feed her my dinner and lunch, and I'd come home with a pocketful of mouse shit. Mouse shit doesn't matter. It comes out in hardened pellets, there's no pong involved, it's not squidgy or anything like that. You just empty you pockets and out come these pellets. Gladys was true and trusted. She very rarely poked her head out of the pocket and exposed herself to instant death. But Doris had Gladys and my cat knocked off. She killed all my pets when I was a kid. She didn't like animals, she'd threatened to do it and she did it. I put a note on her bedroom door, with a drawing of a cat, that said "Murderer." I never forgave her for that. Doris's reaction was the usual: "Shut up. Don't be so soft. It was pissing all over the place."

Doris was (obviously) his mother.  And I'm copying this paragraph out not to do another post about "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" ? some English version of the maternal character ? but a propos of the discussion of football we we're having in the previous post, which linked to a column that went on about the "pocket" ?"Aaron and Ben are pocket-driven passers, with the extra element of being able to create once the pocket is no longer their friend" ? and got garage "garaji" mahal to say "Little Ben will have plenty of opportunities to show how he can evade pass rushers. Because that pocket WILL be collapsing." That got me to say:

By the way, the "pocket" is another one of those feminine things in football... along with touching and tossing down a hankie. It's so adorable: a man in a pocket. It's like Keith Richards's pet mouse Gladys.

My football commentary is (pretty much) all about finding the hints of the feminine in the hyper-manly game. I hope you like it!

Full post as published by Althouse on January 31, 2011 (boomark / email).