Feb 03 2008
It’s an Institution and Whatnot
There’s a little bustling going on in our house right now. Shannon busily packs up a brown grocery bag with light tortilla chips and a homemade southwest dressing for the huge chicken-strip salad she made.
Personally, I’m going straight for the chili dogs when we get there.
You see, we’re going to watch the Super Bowl at a friend’s house on his brand new HDTV. That way, the commercials look much better.
I would say “all kidding aside,” but with me that’s so rare that I doubt anybody would believe it. But, I do hope the game is worth watching, too. Regardless, there will be lots of camaraderie. Or, as a friend in college once said (and of course it forever stuck in the minds of a fortunate few), “Comroddy.”
As I’ve written before, I’m not a big NFL follower. The Super Bowl is a great excuse to get together, though. So, here we go.
Update: Remember playing Operation as a kid? You hoped you didn’t touch the sides while trying to pull out a bone or some such body part, lest you set off the buzzer?
That training paid off on Sunday, saving us a missed Super Bowl party and possibly several hundred dollars.
About 30 seconds before I was ready to post this, Ben got a tiny fake coin stuck in his ear. Two of these things would fit side-by-side in a hole punched in looseleaf notebook paper.
We quickly gathered a pair of tweezers and a flashlight. I barely got the tweezers on the part that still stuck out, but each time Ben whined that it hurt, the coin drew back into the dark recesses of his ear canal.
“It hurts, it hurts! Don’t grab it!” he said.
“Ben, if I don’t get this out of here, then we have to go to the Dr. or the hospital for them to do it for us. Now, are you going to be still and quiet so I can try again?” I said.
“Okay.”
I slowly inserted the tweezers and after two tries got a grip on the plastic coin. I pulled, but lost my hold with the coin half way out. I grabbed it on the first try this time and it came out with one short tug.
“I didn’t put it in there,” Ben said.
“Well, however it got in there, I’m sure you won’t put anything in your ear from now on, will you?” I said.
“Right. But I didn’t put it in there,” Ben insisted. He’s as defensive as I was at that age, even when probably not telling the truth.
We went to the party, all had a great time, and I’m pretty sure Ben will think twice before shoving anything into his ear.
UPDATE TWO: See the fake gold coins on this page at Toys R Us, and be sure to click the picture for the larger version.
Well, tonight was an awesome game!
I’m always for hanging with friends with some classic Super Bowl fare! I probably was more excited this year because last year I was sitting in London feeling far from home. I think my husband was up all night last year watching it live from the UK.
:) Hope you had fun!
My only wish was that there had been more touchdowns in the game…becasue Norah throws her hands in the air and screams whenever there’s a touchdown regardless of who scores. Other than that…amazing game. The E-Trade baby commericals cracked me up.
But he didn’t do it!
Weren’t you listening to him?
MENTAL NOTE: Brush up on Operation skills…just in case!
And Moksha….I loved those same commercials! Hilarious!
The game was ok… but the commercials were great. I loved the Bud Clydesdales one.
I loved even more, the GoDaddy commercial that never got played because the FCC denied it! *LOL*
Who knew there was a purpose to all that buzzing and nose-glowing? Training, eh? I guess i need to brush up on my Operation before my own decides to join Ben in his game. I’m just glad you were up to the challenge.
UPDATE: See link at the end of the post for a look at the fake gold coin.
Anna - It was a great game! We had a good time, Ben included. No more invisible people tried to stuff things into his ears.
Moksha - Yes, more scoring would have been better (kind of like my dating days). The first eTrade baby commercial was my favorite of those. The Bud Clydesdale Rocky spoof was pretty good, too.
Moksha and Anna - That extraction was so much like Operation it’s almost spooky now that I look back on it. I had to be careful not to grab his skin at all while trying to get the tweezers around the tiny coin. Just
Dave - Just now watched that Danica commercial. Pretty funny stuff. The whispering voice in the background added a nice touch.
I’ll have to ask my husband how he was at Operation when he was a kid since I was terrible. I was waiting for you to write that Ben said that he hadn’t put it there and he wouldn’t do it again. That is the sort of kid logic that I live with. Since I’m in Canada, the cool commercials are all overwritten with Canadian ones (even though we can buy most of the same products here). I don’t even think that the Canadian advertisers make new ones for the Super Bowl. I’ll have to check out the commercials on the web, though. But not from work, of course.
I was going to hit the game at a friend’s house and get away from my own wee family for a short bit, but the host sort of came down with bronchitis so that put the kybosh on things there. (Drat!) I ended up watching the second half, oddly enough. I think I wanted to pretend like it was still a social gathering. Since my loyalties had no interest in any part of the game, I decided to root for the underdogs and was sort of glad that the Giants won. Still, it would have been cool to see a perfect 19 - 0 season for the Pats. Oh well. I still slept well after the game.
Glad that Ben had the money successfully extracted from his ear. You could have almost turned that into a magic trick!
Well, the ad does say “choking hazard.” I guess we’re lucky he didn’t put it up his nose. But the other things in that box! Guns, swords, knives, A Cannon! But on the other hand, if you’re going to play “pirate,” ……………….
The game bore out the wisdom of my long-standing practice of watching, if I watch at all, only the 4th quarter of professional football games. The commercials kept me awake until then.
Allen hasn’t done that…yet.
But Ben’s non-admission is priceless.