Bandwagon

Back in the winter of 2000, I was living on Curtis Avenue, mere seconds away from ATO, with Pete, Beth, and Andrew. Pete was really into football, and as 2001 took over, the Patriots were doing pretty well. We'd have people over, eat pizza & cinnasticks, and watch the games. As the kept winning, it seemed like a SuperBowl party was inevitable. That was the year that Adam Vinatieri made clutch field goals materialise like prairie dogs on the... prairie. That was the year they won in the snow.

I'd grown up a baseball fan. Die-hard Red Sox, all the way. In little league, I'd been drafted to the Angels, and hated every minute I was in that uniform. I loved playing, but I hated that I couldn't be a miniature Red Sox player-in-training. It's amazing, all the years I lived in Boston, I never once went to a Patriots game. My dad had been a manager for the Harvard hockey team in his day, and we'd often watch Bruins games through the winter, and the Beanpot later in the season. Football, though, was never really on our radar. When we'd play at recess, I just tried to blend in with a tree (and I was so small I was usually undefended anyway), and if the ball came to me, I'd try to hang on to its nerfiness and not let it bounce off my chest or face. I think I'd been to one SuperBowl party in high school, at Becca's house, but only because I was into her and thought she might've been into me. She later dated my friend Jason and pretty much ruined his life. Bullet dodged.

So these games, while they were glorious to the victors, meant little to me. I mean, of course I was happy to see the local team win. Of course. And it seemed like it had happened in a pretty miraculous fashion, too. They carried on to the SuperBowl, won against the Rams (a huge upset, from what I recall), again on an Adam Vinatieri kick. It was madness.

The next year, there was a similar to-do, though not at my house. At that point I was living on Sunset, a few blocks uphill from Curtis, with Beth, Karen, and Meghan. We'd watch a lot of Gilmore Girls. I didn't really contribute a whole lot to the living environment there - and I'm still not sure why they wanted me as a roommate. Once I bought a loaf of bread, and I hadn't really been eating it, so I left it in the kitchen to be 'communal,' and realised a few days later, when no one had touched it, that there was a nice ingrowth of mold on the lower half. Anyway, I watched the SuperBowl again, and the Patriots again won.

In subsequent years, I gradually started paying more and more attention. I still don't know all the rules - like sometimes a kick goes out of bounds and the receiving team gets it on the 40-yard line. Sometimes they don't. But I'm starting to recognise the officials' hand signals, to know that there's a facemask penalty coming before it's announced (although, to be fair, the sportscasters generally tip the officials' hands). And this year, the Patriots are once again going to the SuperBowl. Now, I'm not the kind of fan who has jerseys, hats, beach towels, and shot glasses with the Patriots logo on them. In fact, I kind of despise the logo. That said, I'll still be cheering for them on the third of February. It's funny, because my little sister grew up in the same house I did, and she has a huge rivalry with her boyfriend, who's rooting for the Giants. Also in the SuperBowl this year. I can't wait to see how that turns out.