Only hindsight provides some of the answers to complex relationships, and I suppose that’s why it difficult to get an appointment with my therapist. Sometimes just talking it out can be therapeutic, but for me, I have to make a sojourn this Christmas to work on this problem that has troubled me for decades. Or at least give it that ever popular “closure.”

So what’s the problem? Being a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. And it isn’t just the lack of championships and dreadful post-season record and any number of lamentable things in their history that’s troubled me all these years. It goes way back to the day I turned 13 years old, and another day, around that time where the MVP of Super Bowl 4 handed me some of his DNA.

The day I became a teenager was December 25, 1971. The longest game in NFL history was played on that day as the Kansas City Chiefs hosted the Miami Dolphins in an AFC Divisional game. The final game at Municipal Stadium, it would prove to be a crushing defeat that would affect me more and more as the years went by. And, in hindsight, the glitter and excitement of Arrowhead Stadium hid the rot that was setting in on the Chiefs that would turn them in to a joke by the end of the decade.

The other jolt to my early adoration and fanaticism for the Chiefs came from Len Dawson himself. It was Macy’s in downtown Kansas City and it was so traumatizing that I still don’t talk about. Suffice it to say, it made me question hero worship and being a fanatic or “fan“ in general.

So I see on the schedule that the Chiefs play the Broncos this Christmas Day, so I think I need to be there to help me through those early childhood traumas, get it out of my system. It’s not always easy to be a Chiefs fan, but it’s become fun to cheer for a team where you have no expectations. And $40 for parking. See you in Arrowhead on my birthday.