Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday, 2008. I hear that Super Bowl XLII, as it is called, is going to be played in Arizona this year.
I won't be watching -- not because I have anything against the Super Bowl, but because American football just does not interest me. I've never been a fan of the sport, and other members of my immediate family share my disinterest.
When asked who we're rooting for, we don't have an answer to give. As likely as not, we don't even know which teams are playing in a given year. I recognize that most Americans think this is odd, if not downright blasphemous. On occasion this disinterest has led to some funny exchanges.
A number of years ago, when we still lived in a house with a lawn, my husband unwittingly chose Super Bowl Sunday to mow that lawn. There he was out in the yard, going about his mowing, when the neighbor from across the street came dashing over. I happened to be looking out the window just at that moment, and it suddenly struck me that it was Super Bowl Sunday, and that the neighbor was probably annoyed with the sound of the lawn mower during the game.
But no, it wasn't that. Instead I heard the neighbor ask, "What's the matter? Is your TV broken or something? The game's just coming on, so come on over to our place. You can watch it with us."
Apparently it never occurred to the neighbor that my husband was not interested in the game. Instead he figured that our TV must not be working. Surely there could be no other reason that someone would be out working in his yard during the Super Bowl!
My husband declined the neighbor's offer, but he also stopped mowing the lawn and came inside until after the game. He did this partly out of politeness, not wanting to make noise during the game, but also to avoid making a spectacle of himself as the only man in the neighborhood who was not taking part in this annual rite.
On several occasions when we have been away from the United States on Super Bowl Sunday, we have witnessed our fellow Americans go to unusual lengths to learn who won the game. Let me relate a couple of examples.
One Super Bowl Sunday we were in the departure lounge at a large international airport waiting for a flight to New York. We watched as a passenger made the rounds in the gate area asking people he judged to be American if they knew who won The Game. When he got to us, my husband told him we didn't know, but then half-jokingly suggested a phone call to an AT&T operator in the U.S. to find out.
"You can call the operator for free," my husband said. He fished out his AT&T card with the toll-free numbers on it and handed it to the sports fan. The guy's face lit up, and he actually went to a pay phone, dialed the toll-free number for AT&T's USA-Direct service, and asked the Big Question when the operator came on the line.
He got his answer. Not only that, his team had won, so he turned around and loudly announced the winner and the scores to everyone. The whole departure lounge erupted in a mixture of hoots and boos. Total strangers started high-fiving one another. Others glowered at the guy who had made the phone call and announced what to them must have been bad news.
On another occasion, we were on an Egyptian dive boat in the Red Sea in an area known as the Tiran Straits. It was during the first Gulf War, and my husband and I were two of only three Americans in the group of divers on board.
There were warships of several nations patrolling the area, presumably to intercept unauthorized shipments headed to the Jordanian port of Aqaba, which was under blockade. Our boat's captain was monitoring radio traffic between the warships and the commercial vessels. In between dives, the rest of us were listening along with him. It was fascinating.
At length we heard a voice with an obvious American accent come over the radio, and thus we learned that an American warship was in the area. Our compatriot diver jumped up and begged our captain to contact the U.S. Navy ship to find out who had won the Super Bowl, which had been played the day before. The captain hesitated. The diver pleaded. Finally our captain relented and radioed to the American ship. He identified himself and said he had an American passenger on board who wanted to know the score of the Super Bowl. There was only a brief hesitation before the warship's radioman instructed our captain to switch over to a certain frequency. He did so, and a Navy sailor then enthusiastically recited over the radio the name of the winning team, the scores, as well as a few highlights of the game! It bordered on the surreal.
One of my favorite stories of this type involved the World Series rather than the Super Bowl. It happened to a friend of ours.
Our friend was returning home from an overseas trip, and after clearing Customs and Immigration at Los Angeles International Airport, found himself with several hours to kill before boarding his connecting flight. He spotted a bar in the terminal, and went inside for a sandwich and a beer.
Since he was traveling alone, he decided to sit at the bar, thinking maybe he could strike up a conversation with another traveler to pass the time. As he took his seat, he noticed that all eyes in the place were directed toward the TV screen over the bar, watching a baseball game. Our friend is not much of a sports fan himself, but -- just trying to be friendly -- he turned to the man seated next to him and, in the most jovial one-of -the-boys tone he could muster, asked, "So who's playing?"
The way our friend tells it, the man next to him actually recoiled at the question, as in, "Hey Buddy, what planet are YOU from??" The bartender quietly told him it was the last game of the World Series.
I received this list as an email pass-around. The items on the list made me chuckle, probably because each has a grain of truth.
