Football season has ended: Perfect timing for this story from Ecumen blogger Jim Klobuchar:

I want to be the first to announce the arrival of an exciting shift in the vocabulary of professional football, direct from the lips of an original woman.

My wife Susan glows with the auras of the emancipated American woman. She is Harvard-educated with an intercontinental range in taste and action. She adores books written by Nobel-prize winning authors from Egypt and Latin America, and cooks with an easy sophistication that rolls the eyes of gourmets. Further, she regrets the absence of women from the lineups of big league baseball because as a star of her fourth grade team in Washingon D.C. she envisioned a career as a right-handed pitcher in the American League, having perfected a wicked slider.

I tell you these things to explain my wife’s bizarre behavior a few Sundays ago when the professional football regular season, defying all odds, actually approached its end.

I settled in my basement study, working the TV control to adjust the sound. The game had just begun, surviving the usual five-minute agony of the national anthem as it is mauled in the stadiums of America today. My wife walked in and plopped a hammer and a heavy screw driver on the cabinet top next to my desk.

After studying this scene uneasily for a few moments, I said, “welcome. That was a fine lunch. What are your intentions with these violent instruments?”

Her response: “You’ve been telling me for years that football when it’s watched at home is a communal game, where families can gather and cheer or groan together. So when I come downstairs to join you, the game starts and the conversation ends. For the next three hours you’re the transplanted Sphinx. I like to be near the action so I’m going to re-hang some pictures in the family room.”

The family room is next door to my office. The game was on and a hellish hacking and hammering soon broke out from the adjacent walls. It didn’t take long to decode my wife’s strategy. “Won’t you join me,” I said sweetly. “Feel free to ask any questions to get caught up with the game.” She said, “I remember your telling me that you used to teach a football clinic for women.”

“Right. We held class every other Tuesday. More than 200 women would gather to decomplicate the mysteries of football. It was a landmark in the field of higher education.”

“Did you ever talk about tight ends?

“Right. Bad jokes aside, the tight end is one of the bigger pass receivers. He is big enough to double as a blocker so he lines up close, or tight, to the linemen.”

“All right, “ my wife said, “if there are tight ends, who are the loose ends?

“The what…?

And then the light flashed, boldly and inescapably. My wife had scored. She had cut through the football gobbledygook about wideouts and flankers who spread out near the sidelines. The female instinct for common sense and clarity had done it again. My wife had cut to the bone. If there are tight ends, there have to be loose ends. I’m going to petition the football arbiters to change the gobbledygook. No more wideouts. From now on they are tight ends and loose ends.

And in at least one one household, it’s better than sorry ends. I may ask you to sign the petition.