Since the football season is upon us here is the Eleventh installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not to Do by Marie Ann Bailey of 1WriteWay at http://1writeway.com and John W. Howell of Fiction Favorites at http://johnwhowell.com. These lists are simu-published on our blogs each Monday. We hope you enjoy.

10.  When invited to a football party, do not show up in your favorite team’s uniform if the game that is being watched does not include your team. You will immediately let your host know that you have no interest in the game and that you only came to drink up the beer and eat as much of the food as possible.

9.  When invited to a football party and asked to bring a dish, do not think you are fulfilling the host’s wish by hauling in a big bag of store bought popcorn and liter of diet soda.  Actually, you won’t be fulfilling anyone’s wish with that contribution.

8.  When invited to a football party and you are welcome to bring a guest, do not think this includes a stranger you grabbed off the street or a distant member of your family. The host probably intended you to bring a date or spouse and won’t appreciate feeding extraneous random people.

7.  When invited to a football party and the host has no intention of starting a gambling pool, do not think it is your duty to correct what you think is an oversight. The host probably doesn’t want to put his guests on the spot to cough up a twenty which they will ultimately lose.

6. When invited to a football party and none of the guests seem to understand fantasy football, allow them to remain blissfully unaware of the intricacies and complexity of the game that you and your office mates play every week.

5.  When invited to a football party and you see that the host does not have a fifty-inch HDTV, do not offer to buy everyone a drink at the local sports bar just because it has four such TVs. Your tab may wind up more than you can afford and your host may wind up wrapping one of the TVs around your head.

4.  When invited to a football party and the host does not have your brand of beer, do not turn up your nose and declare loudly: “well if you don’t have any I’ll just have water.” Go ahead and sacrifice your delicate taste buds on the beer that resembles carbonated defrost that your host is serving. After all, you don’t need to drink a barrel of it, although a barrel may be what you need to forget why you cared.

3.  When invited to a football party and you need to describe a great play, do not pick up a curio and ask that the crowd to imagine it as the football. It may be that the curio you just passed into the kitchen and that was dropped by your wide receiver was a Faberge egg handed down by  your host’s great-great-great-grandmother.

2.  When invited to a football party and you realize the game is the most boring thing you have ever watched, do not pick up the remote and change the channel to a movie. You just may offend not only your host but the rest of the party as well. They may be reminded of the time the TV network cut off the last two minutes of the Super Bowl to air the move Heidi. You chance vigilante action.

1.  When invited to a football party and the game is over, it should be your signal to leave. Do not wait for your host to switch off the TV and start clearing the living room of empty beer cups, pizza boxes and paper plates of gnawed chicken wings. Your host is not making room for you and your guest to spend the night on the couch. They really want you to return to your own couch no matter what they say.