Big Game Day Memories
You know how it gets to be this time of year and that gets you reminiscing about past Super Bowl Sundays? Perhaps you think back on a particular Super Bowl party. Or maybe a particular match up involving your favorite team. Or perhaps you think back on that time you went searching for a dead body on Super Bowl Sunday when you were 1o.
You know normal childhood memories.
Ok, so one of these things is not like the others, but they are absolutely linked in my mind and will be in yours in a minute.
I grew up in New Orleans. (Record scratch sound here: This only occurred to me this very moment. I always say, “I grew up in New Orleans” but we moved back to Texas when I was 12. I truly think of those years as my formative childhood years and my oldest will be 11 this year…which means his early formative years are just about done. Whoa.)
Anyway, my brothers and I would go on all sorts of adventures with my dad when we were kids. From hunting and fishing trips, to turtle catching and woods exploring, to all manner of suburban expeditions. Some of these suburban expeditions involved walking through less traveled areas behind grocery stores, restaurants, and strip malls. Because when you live in suburbia adventure is where you find it.
These adventures were exclusively Sunday afternoon adventures and Super Bowl Sunday was no exception.
Somehow we became aware of a large discarded chest freezer standing on its side in the alley behind a T. J. Maxx near our house. Somehow my brothers, our friend, and I also got the idea that there was a dead body in that freezer.
Now, I’d love to say this fancy was some mix of having seen the classic Stand By Me and reading too many Hardy Boys mysteries. However, we had not seen that movie yet, and a boy can’t read too many (original) Hardy Boys mysteries.
It wasn’t anything morbid though, just the natural course of things when a handful of tween-age boys get the idea that there could be a dead body hiding in plain sight. We already played the game of who could get closest to the abandoned building three blocks away at night before losing their nerve and in the broad daylight this seemed like an equally appealing undertaking.
However, this area was across a busy intersection we weren’t allowed to cross on our own. Enter Dad. Cue Ben E. King.
So, on Super Bowl Sunday 1990-something, my brothers, our friend, and I head off on an adventure walk with Dad. Destination? The discarded chest freezer in the alley behind T.J. Maxx. We troup over to the area and spot the freezer. It’s dented, battered, and dirty. It’s also suddenly very real.
Dad is standing back and we’re trying to act nonchalant, but no one really wants to go up to the freezer and open it. My friend is clearly talking himself into doing this and starts forward. Then Dad mentions we might not want to see what’s in there. That does it for me. I’m done. There’s nothing in there, let’s just go.
My friend reaches forward. I freeze. I really don’t want to see a dead body but I can’t look away. I think back to that time a couple years earlier when a train struck someone walking on the railroad tracks and as we drove by my dad said you may not want to look over there, but I looked and wished I hadn’t.
The sunny Sunday afternoon is suddenly dark and the dark crack where the door of the freezer meets the side is getting larger. Oh my gosh there’s something in there…it’s…it’s…
A dead body was not in there. It was just a rusty storage rack for frozen items.
Nothing worth seeing at all. And yet that nothing made an impression that was something. Something I’m telling you about 25 years later and still associate with the high American holiday that is Super Bowl Sunday.
How many dads make the time to regularly go on walks, hunting trips, or fishing outings with their boys? How many teach their sons to find adventure in what most would think is a mundane setting? How many sons have formative years to look back on for guidance 20 years later?
Maybe that’s why those years are so formative… I think these experiences prepare boys for the future more than they know at the time and more than we give them credit for now.
Super Bowl Sunday may be one of the biggest “holidays” in this nation, but with the ads, marketing, and the regularly scandalous halftime shows I’m not sure it has much positive impact on boys.
And it certainly doesn’t stand a chance at being as impactful as a father.
So, Dads, go on walks and adventures with your boys. Show your sons the ropes by just being Dad. Stand by them and give them an example they can look back on for guidance when they have kids of their own. It makes a bigger difference than you realize. On Super Bowl Sunday or any Sunday.