Watching The Game With Grandpa On The Big Chair

The Grandpa Shirt That Comes With a Matching Jersey and a Reserved Seat

Before my grandson was born, this grandpa shirt was already accounted for. A red jersey, number twelve, was folded on a closet shelf, sized for a person who did not exist yet. The foam finger was in the garage. And the left side of the brown couch was empty every Sunday the way a chair at a dinner table stays empty when someone is expected but has not arrived.

He arrived four years ago. This is his first full season on the couch.

The Watching the Game Together on the Big Chair Tee from the Little Hands Collection is that first season in crayon. A child drew it: grandpa and grandson on a brown couch, both in red number twelve jerseys, both leaning forward, both fists in the air, both mouths wide open screaming at the same television at the same moment about the same play. Grandpa has a blue foam finger on his left hand. An orange bowl of chips sits between them on the cushion, and chips are scattered across the floor because nobody had time to save the bowl when whatever happened on the screen happened. Yellow crayon lines burst from the TV like the broadcast itself cannot contain what is going on. The text alternates red and blue across the bottom, because that is how a four-year-old colors team day.

What Things Do Grandpas Like?

Grandpas like this. They like Sunday afternoon in the fourth quarter with the right person next to them and a grandson in a matching jersey who does not understand the prevent defense but knows that when grandpa stands up, you stand up, and when grandpa’s fist goes in the air, yours goes up too. The kid does everything I do half a second after I do it, like a forty-pound shadow with chip dust on his chin and a foam finger that keeps sliding off because his hand is too small for it and he will not admit it.

He does not know the rules yet. He knows the sounds. He knows which tone of my voice means the play was good and which means somebody needs to be traded by Monday. He knows the fourth quarter is for volume. He knows that when I lean forward and grab the armrest, something important is about to happen and he should lean forward too. He is learning the game the way children learn everything from a grandfather: not through explanation, but through proximity. Through sitting close enough to feel the couch shake when I react.

He asked me once what offside means. I explained it using the chip bowl and two remote controls as players. He nodded like he understood, and I assumed he had moved on. Two weeks later a flag hit the screen and he turned to me and said, “Offside.” He was right. I have never been prouder of a single word in my life.

The Number on the Back Was Never His to Choose

My father watched in this number. Not this jersey, but this number. He sat in a recliner in a living room in a house I have not stepped inside in thirty years and he wore red twelve on his chest and he yelled at a television that weighed as much as a dresser and his fist went up the same way mine goes up now. I sat next to him. The left side. I did not choose the seat. I chose it the way you choose your own heartbeat, which is to say I did not choose it at all, and I would not change it if someone offered me every seat in the stadium.

When my son was old enough, the left side of a different couch was waiting for him. Same number. Same sounds. He learned to react through the cushion the way I learned from my father: through volume, through a fist in the air, through a bowl of chips that left the armrest at least once a season because something happened that required standing. Now his son sits there. Number twelve. The left side. Different couch, same spot. The chips are still on the floor.

We have a thing we do when the team scores. It is not a high five. It is not a fist bump. It belongs to us and it takes four moves and he invented two of them and I invented the other two and nobody else in the family can do it right. That handshake belongs to Sunday in the fourth quarter and it does not travel past this couch.

The Chips on the Floor

Look at the floor in the drawing. Orange chips everywhere. Nobody has picked them up. Nobody is going to pick them up until the final whistle, and the final whistle is not close. The bowl tipped when we both jumped at the same time, which happens at least once a game now because his reactions are linked to mine. I jump, he jumps. The bowl never had a chance. My wife stopped buying the breakable ones in September.

Sunday mornings before the game we throw in the front yard. Twenty minutes, maybe less. He wears the jersey to throw in because he puts it on at nine and it does not come off until bedtime. The yard is the warm-up. The couch is the main event. By halftime his legs are tucked under him and his head starts tilting toward my arm and by the fourth quarter he is either wide awake and dangerous or completely asleep with his cheek on my shoulder and his fist still half-closed from the last play he saw. I watch the end of the game alone with a sleeping boy in a number twelve jersey and a floor covered in chips and a score I no longer care about, because I already won something today that no scoreboard keeps track of.

This grandpa shirt is $39.99, ships free. The seat on this couch came with the family and nobody has ever put a price on it.

Printed on a Comfort Colors 1717 garment-dyed heavyweight tee with water-based DTG ink — sizing and care details here.