El Gran Juego
My top five happiest Super Bowl experiences:
1995: We had just moved into our new house in Naperville, having escaped the clutches of New Orleans. It’s a foundational memory for that home and I can picture where I was sitting, recall talking to my Dad during the game, everything. Also, the 49ers won, interrupting the Cowboy’s dynasty (temporarily).
1992-1994: Coinciding with my middle school years, I watched the Buffalo Bills lose repeatedly in my friend’s unfinished basement. For three years he hosted a Super Bowl party for upwards of twenty 12-14 year old boys, a concept that as a parent now makes me shudder. We’d at least watch the first half, but the second half was generally for playing flashlight tag on their expansive property. One of those years was when Crystal Pepsi was released. It was a very big deal.
2021: Notable entirely for pirates. Anders was entering peak pirate mania (a situation that persisted for about 15 months longer than we expected) and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Super Bowl meant he had more than passing interest. Not enough to watch the game, but enough to be excited when the pirates won. What was more exciting was the buried treasure he found the next day, undoubtedly the result of the pirates hiding their booty after such a momentous Super Bowl victory.
2014: Seattle blows out Denver. Gesina and I watched this at a party hosted by friends in Atlanta. It was entirely a Darden crew. A fun game (for me) to watch and a good time generally.
2018: Watching the very entertaining Eagles win over the Patriots with my Dad. We were in Portland for the weekend because of a ballet fundraising gala (this is not a misprint, life is weird sometimes) and we enjoyed the Super Bowl at my parent’s home. For Christmas a few weeks prior, we gifted my Dad a trip to see a game in the Rose Bowl. Coincidentally, at the gala and auction on the Saturday before the Super Bowl, a trip to see UCLA’s season opener was on offer, guided by a former UCLA player, all expenses paid, etc etc. It was a good Super Bowl and my Dad and I excitedly discussed and planned the auction purchase I made. It was football on football.
My top four least happy Super Bowl experiences:
2006: I did not watch this game, which would have required being in the MWR facility in the middle of the night. While in Iraq, I was basically pretending the real world didn’t exist anyway; skipping the Super Bowl was consistent with the theme. Seattle would lose. My Soldiers, based in Seattle, were disappointed. The next day a convoy returning to our base had a vehicle accident and two people died, both of them from our brigade at Fort Lewis (not under my command). There was concern they were fatigued after staying up late to watch the game.
2004: Watched in the middle of the night in the battalion dining facility in Korea. The AFN broadcast commentators described the game like the viewer was entirely unfamiliar with the concept of football. We needed to be in the motor pool in only a few hours. I skipped the second half to get more sleep.
2002: The night prior, at an on-campus undergraduate party, a very drunk football player started a fight and, in the ensuing sequence of events, kicked one of my roommates in the face (who, up until that point, was not involved). It made for a bit of a depressed Super Bowl Sunday. He laid on the couch all day and refused to watch the game with us. This same friend was also born on 9/11, and I distinctly recall him, while icing his lip on the couch, complaining that all the good days were being taken away from him.
2013: I was very excited for this Super Bowl. The 49ers were back! But I was in Mongolia, so I watched it in the early morning hours and at work on a Monday morning. Surreptitiously, since, you know, work. And then the 49ers lost.
The Super Bowl is like any other holiday: the outcome is not the event itself but how you spend the time with others. Being alone for the Super Bowl, for me, has felt much like being alone for other holidays (spent in Korea, Iraq, etc)...fairly crappy.
This year, we were not together to enjoy the Super Bowl. It fell on one of my Houston weekends.
Did that make this year’s Super Bowl fairly crappy?
It does not land it on the ‘worst-of’ list, but being alone plus a crushing overtime defeat of the 49ers equals ‘not as happy as I would prefer’.
The most frequent question I field on our cross-border experiment is about frequency: how often am I in Costa Rica?
The answer: not as often as I would prefer.
We’re trying to NOT spend $600-800 every week on round trip tickets. But it is hard not to want to, as I’d vastly prefer to be at home with Gesina and Anders than in Houston (no offense Houston).
December holidays were a gift, resulting in us being together for a long stretch of time. January and February are mostly set for alternating weekends, though we currently have three consecutive weekends on the books for March, followed by a multi-week spring break. It is an evolving picture, and more flexibility will be arriving (with the addition of PTO days to stretch out some future weekends), but it isn’t optimal. What I’d prefer is to be based in Costa Rica, an option that is not mechanically possible with my work.
Alternating weekends, when limited to Saturday and Sunday, have proven to be suboptimal; the time on the ground is too short and it still precludes participation in most ‘normal life’ activities.
That said, suboptimal is not the same as ‘bad’, and we’ve had excellent weekend visits. The weekend prior to the Super Bowl included a visit from my mother, a day at a nature preserve, seeing the recently energized Poás volcano, and a full Sunday afternoon poolside in the sun.
Next weekend we are making a trip to the Caribbean coast, which we haven’t done since Gesina and I backpacked through the country in 2011. In March, one weekend will include Anders’s birthday party.
The time together is well spent, but after the 100% family time of 2020-2023, it is a drop off in togetherness we do not love. The tradeoff is worth it right now, given the goals we have, but the current routine from the first few months of work won’t be the permanent pattern.