It is an age-old, time-honored tradition. Your team wins the Super Bowl, World Series, or Stanley Cup. Or, Athletic Cup. Or, your 6-year-old daughter’s soccer team wins their first game.
What’s next up on the agenda? Why, rioting and looting, of course!
The Super Bowl is upon us. Note to Police Departments in San Francisco and Baltimore . . . dust off the riot gear.
Years ago, when the San Francisco 49ers beat the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XVI (that is 16 for you non-Romans), my husband and I lived 20-ish miles from downtown San Francisco. We watched the game on TV and after the heart-stopping win we hopped in the car to celebrate the victory with our fellow crazies Niner fans.
There was dancing in the streets, one air horn per male, and joy and jubilation throwing up spilling out of every bar. San Francisco knows how to party.
The frenzied fans shouted, “We won! We won! Now let’s turn over a city bus!”
And they did.
I kid you not. My husband and I took one look at each other and, as my mother would say, with head up and tail up like a bedbug going to war, got the hell out of there.
The news reports were embarrassing. If my timeworn brain remembers correctly, cars were set on fire, storefronts were vandalized, and the drunk-tank had a waiting list.
I don’t understand it.
My idea of a celebration is popping open a bottle of champagne and having my husband drink Moet out of my shoe, not wracking a police officer over the head with said stiletto.
My husband and I have close ties to the 49ers of old.
~ My husband played under Coach Bill Walsh (stop giggling, you know what I mean) at Stanford.
~ Ronnie Lott’s uncle lived across the street from us.
~ Ray Wersching, the 49ers famed kicker, became an insurance agent after retiring from the NFL. He sold my husband’s company insurance until he was charged with four felonies for embezzling millions of dollars. Ray, not my husband. The charges against Ray were dismissed, but his business partner was sent to prison. Ol’ Ray is now a CPA. Charges dismissed or not, imagine hiring him to do you taxes.
~ We are proud owners of a regulation football signed by the 49er team that beat the Bengals. Too bad you can’t read any of the signatures, otherwise we could retire.
~ One last way we are best friends with the 49ers . . . my girlfriend once saw Jennifer Montana (Joe’s beautiful wife) at a shopping mall.
Don’t get me wrong here. I am not a football fan. I don’t hate it; I just don’t like it. However, I do watch the Super Bowl. I look at it this way . . . why read a whole book when you can read the last chapter to find out what happens? Why watch hours of grown men banging into each other, game after game. And they wonder why their head hurts?
I am one of those annoying women who talk during the game, walk in front of the TV on the way to refill the guacamole bowl, and look at my guests funny as they work their way through a keg of beer.
Sorry, football fans.
And yes . . . I watch the game for the commercials. You knew that was coming.
Click here for my famous bean dip recipe to put in your super bowl. Go Niners!