It was getting late on Super Bowl Sunday and my wife was beginning her usual routine; looking out our kitchen windows longingly at the other couples in our condo complex heading to a party to which we weren’t invited.
“Who’s hosting this year?” I asked with affected innocence. “The Grubers?” The Melzers? The Robinettes?”
“Why do you care?” she asked, and she worked more than a little bitterness into her voice.
“I care,” I said and moved to console her, but she went frigid and repulsed my attempt at sympathy.
“No you don’t, and you know it.”
“I know more about football that you do. You don’t know a flea-flicker from a fumble-rooski.”
“I do so.”
“Okay–what’s a flea flicker?” I watched her take on a look of consternation. If she got this one right she was virtual certainty to get a passing grade.
“A flea flicker is when . . . one of the men behind the line . . . throws it–back?”
“To whom?”
“The guy who handed it off to him?”
“Very good. Now–for 100 points and the game, what’s a fumble rooski?”
I could tell this one wasn’t going to be as easy for her. “It’s when somebody fumbles the ball and . . .” She screwed up her face the way she did in her college yearbook when she was posing for a picture about mid-terms.
“Yes?”
If humans were like their cartoon character manifestations, there would’ve been steam coming out her ears.
“All right, I don’t know, and I don’t care about football. But I want to go to Super Bowl parties!”
“I’m not stopping you.”
“I can’t just show up and say ‘I’m here, I left my husband behind because he’d spoil the fun.'”
“Oh, I don’t think I spoil anyone’s fun. I just want to watch with the play-by-play on mute.”
“But why?”
“So I can hear the jazz that I will have thoughtfully brought along to play on my JBL Flip4!”
“But other people want to listen to the announcers.”
“That’s where they’re wrong. If you listen to them you’ll hear such pearls of wisdom as ‘The team that puts the most points on the board is gonna win!'”
“Nobody’s dumb enough to say that.”
Who would you rather listen to?
“Au contraire, mon cher,” I said, lapsing into the rudimentary French I mastered in college–nothing but straight A’s! “Phil Simms used to say that all the time.”
“Well, you can’t just barge into someone’s house and expect to set the rules.”
“You’re right, sweetie,” I said, then kissed her on the forehead, the way you would to console a 10-year-old whose Barbie doll was run over by a lawn mower. “I won’t bring any jazz, I’ll just mute the commercials.”
“But people LIKE the commercials. And companies spend a LOT of money making them.”
“A fool and his money, yadda yadda yadda.”
“They’re funny, with cute little animals doing unlikely things . . .”
“To sell crap to people who’ve been lulled into dull-witted complacency.”
“It’s not all crap, I’m sure some of are good, reliable products designed to make our lives easier.”
“If the stuff is so great, why do they have to spend $8 million for a minute to hawk it to us?”