You betcha--watching the battle of the yellow pants. The Super Bowl seems like an excellent time to multi-task, especially in between the commercials. At first I thought about sending out some Lego Club emails. But then I thought better of it when I imagined what those people would think of me when they noticed when I sent the emails. I figure I don't need to alienate my neighbors any more. I still drive around a car with Texas plates. So here I am blogging. And thinking about football, which logically leads me to think about calculus. Don't you think about A.P. Calculus when watching pro football? (No...?)
Here we are, as a family, watching the Super Bowl, and I can't help but wonder if our time in Wisconsin during such formative years for our children will lead them to have some kind of vague lifelong loyalty to the Packers. Our children are creating memories and forming impressions that will stay with them forever. FOREVER. What is going to be a part of this FOREVER? The Packers? What else??
Football always reminds me of elementary school. One year before the Super Bowl our P.E. teacher taped up a tall piece of butcher paper, divided it down the middle, and wrote the competing teams at the top: Bears and Patriots. All of the children in the school wrote their names under the team they wanted to win. Well, that was easy. The Bears, naturally. This was during the tenure of "The Refrigerator," after all. Every single child wrote his or her name on the Bears side. Except one brave soul. (Who I now admire for his courage in the face of intense peer pressure, but who at the time I thought was an idiot. I mean, who likes the Patriots??) As a result, my entire life I have thought, "Bears, good. Patriots, bad." I also truly believed no body (except one random reject kid) liked the Patriots. So it was a shock to the system when, twenty years later, the Patriots dominated football...and it seemed like they had fans. People liked the Patriots??? I could not shake the impression from elementary school.
Likewise, because of that very same experience in elementary gym class, I had a hard time shaking the feeling two weeks ago that I should have been cheering for Chicago. (Bears, good. Bears, good. Bears, good.) Wow, elementary school is some powerful stuff. So I wonder, will there be a voice deep inside David that will forever urge him to cheer on the Packers? What else will those voices from elementary school whisper to him?
Because of elementary school, professional football always leads me to think of math. That's because of my second grade math teacher. As we struggled to memorize our times tables, she taught us all kinds of nifty tricks. I learned quickly that I desperately needed those nifty tricks. I could not memorize numbers. I couldn't hold them in my head. I had to have some kind of trick to remember my times tables. (I'm speaking in the past tense here, but all of that still holds true today.) To help us remember 7x7, my teacher simply told us to think about football. That was easy. You see, I lived in Denver at the time, and anyone in the entire state of Colorado who ever saw the number 7 immediately thought of John Elway. My little second grade self included. And what is the answer to 7x7? No, it's not the Broncos. But it was the second best thing. 49! I happened to be elementary school during a time when the 49ers were dominating football. The NFL saved me! I never would have remembered 7x7=49 without it!
And just when you thought we were well on our way to the connection to calculus, I have to let you in on the news that the next stop in my mind is a story about a Cabbage Patch Kid named Mary Ellen.
But, now that the kids are in bed, I might give a little undivided attention to the game. (Or maybe it's really the chance to cuddle with my husband that I'm looking forward to.) Either way, we'll broach the ever exciting topic of Mary Ellen...and calculus...another day.
P.S. We can see the highway from our house. There is nary a car. It is very, very quiet out there today.
P.P.S. I love that both teams in the Super Bowl are old school teams, with the names to go with it. What history! (When I was little, whenever I heard "Packers," I always thought of the UPS man because he delivers packages. I didn't make the connection to "meat packer." Why would I? I was a vegetarian. One day when I saw their green and yellow uniforms, I was genuinely surprised: I think I had honestly expected them to be brown like a UPS truck. Also, I thought the Steelers were "the stealers." Anyway, despite my lack of a decent football education, I have some appreciation for these teams and the history behind them. Because, really, without tradition, what is the point?)
