So how did Super Bowl Sunday get to be such an institution?  Are you planning your day around TV football pre-game shows, prepping in the kitchen with traditional family finger foods and a passel of neighbors stopping by for the evening?

Are you out at your favorite sports bar with friends for the night? Will you be watching the most expensive prime time television commercials with interest or indifference, including the controversial Tim Tebow anti-abortion spot?

Sports writer Mike Celizic contends that the Super Bowl is the greatest one-day event in the history of the world (or MSNBC has very able hedline writers), and perhaps he has it right. The Super Bowl is not the greatest sporting event – but it is a monumental event American-style, complete with big name half-time entertainment, hot-hottie-hot cheerleaders, and an excuse to party in the dead of winter.

Cultural traditions

I’ve always thought of football as a gang of gladiators on each side, powerful and determined, gutting it out in a war of gore and grit on slippery fields in the worst possible seasons. Mud, snow, bitter cold. To be frank, it isn’t my sport. I attended the requisite Thanksgiving football game in high school, shut my eyes in horror as young men would slam into each other or finish in a traffic pile up just shy of the goal line. But I confess I’m grateful that my testosterone household has always been relatively football free. That doesn’t mean sports free, but we watched tennis, soccer, Olympic sports. I also admit I was an NBA basketball junkie in my thirties, and I am a woman who loves baseball… movies.

Super Bowl parties

There’s no question that Super Bowl Sunday is about much more than a championship. It’s a rowdy gathering at the local sports bar, or a family evening built around visiting and viewing, a day with tailgate parties even if they’re cooked up inside (given that it’s February!), and it’s all about tradition. In my mind, it’s associated with Labor Day picnics, Fourth of July fireworks, and shares the quintessentially American, larger than life aura of celebration. Even in a non-football household.

Man Teens

It’s Sunday morning. There is at least one extra man-teen sleeping in the house (yes, another impromptu teenage party, and I believe teenagers should have parties in spite of their parents). My sons have never been especially interested in football (one cycles, the other plays tennis), but they have enjoyed rooting for their high school soccer and football teams. They’ve attended games, to support their school and socialize. And there’s no question that any sport – participating or spectating – teaches lessons about discipline, perseverance, teamwork, and competition. And let’s face it – football is always an excuse to party!

Man Cave Land and Big Game Recipes

So I’m searching recipe sites for finger foods to enjoy this evening, just in case.

Buffalo wings (and blue cheese dipping sauce) may be traditional, but honeyed chicken wings are my preference, with stuffed potato skins. As for dessert, I may consider coconut oatmeal bars, or scrounge in my baking drawer and concoct something of my own.

Meanwhile, I’m sure my friend’s husband (with the Man Cave) will be in all his glory this evening, enjoying his football-friendly space where his Louisiana colors surely mean a gathering around the big screen TV.

Just another day? For me, more or less. But if this evening brings another gathering of teenagers, I’ll try my hand at a few recipes, and then retreat to my bedroom. I won’t watch the game in entirety, but I may peek at the goings-on. As much for the commercials as the action, and because even in a non-football household, it isn’t quite “just another day.”

© D A Wolf

Big Little Wolf’s Daily Plate of Crazy

“What?” I choke back the laughter.

“You heard me,” he repeats. “Suck balls. Sour balls. Or a lemon.”

Home remedies, saliva ducts, sour balls, lack of lemons. Last evening everything was “usual” until we were struck by our typically unusual  “usual” – my son, just before dinner, emerged from his version of a Teen-Man-Cave and said: “Look under my tongue.”

OK. He’s an adolescent. I’m the mother. It could be his chem lab, or a joke. I’ll bite. It’s what mothers do.

I look, I see tongue, the icky slimy undersea world of stuff beneath. You know, what looks like mollusk innards. Also known as salivary glands. My, but it’s dark in there.

“And why am I doing this?”

“Something’s swollen,” he says. “And it hurts.” 

I send him for a flashlight, which he dutifully brings back – a huge industrial strength number we use for power outages. So I look. I wouldn’t know a salivary gland if I fell on one. Well, not right then. Twenty minutes later he was back, with a small bulge on his neck and a noticeably swollen area under his tongue.

Of course it’s eight at night and I’ve been up since 5 and beat, but he looks at me plaintively – not so much because he’s in pain – but he’s hungry. He’s 16. Eating is in the job description, and at the moment, he can’t eat.

So I resort to something I rarely do: internist husband of an old friend, father of four, good-natured if I can make him laugh. I call and ask if I’m interrupting dinner (he says no), I explain that the future mural painter of his personal Man Cave seems to have a swollen salivary gland and pregnant neck, that while it might not impair his artistic  eye, in his weakened state (he couldn’t swallow) he was likely to be unable to embellish the one remaining undecorated wall in aforementioned manly private space.

He laughs, and says “suck balls.”

Huh?

When life gives you lemons, suck them

I reassure him my son is more annoyed (and hungry) than anything else, and he explains it’s probably a blocked salivary duct (we begin to Google), and repeats: “Suck balls. Sour balls. Lemons are best if you have them, so suck a lemon, and if not, something else sour.”

You have to love a home remedy. And a doctor with a Man Cave. And the $125 out-of-pocket he just saved me. I hope.

I thank him and begin to forage in the fridge and cabinet. No lemons. No sour balls. Oranges, apples, Butterfingers, Kit Kats, quarts of milk, bags of spinach. Ah. . . Real Lemon juice in those little lemony plastic containers. So I figure that’s worth a try, and I squeeze some in a paper cup and have my son sip, suck, pucker, and spit. (He rolls his eyes. He scrunches his face. He’s 16 going on six. He photographs his undertongular region. Chem lab? Facebook?)

I love home remedies. But a half hour later, still nada. Apparently Real Lemon juice for salivary glands won’t do it.

I put on my sweater, my shoes, my jacket, my scarf, my gloves, and grab the car keys.

“Preference?” I ask.

“Sour balls,” he says.

It’s late. The supermarket is farther than Target and Home Goods, and I figure I’ll give them a shot first for something sour to suck on. Lucky me. Some weird sour gummy something, and then an interminable line, and eventually, home. He sucks balls. And sucks balls. We put warm compresses on his neck. He goes to bed.

Monday, Monday. . . only it’s Tuesday

And it’s Tuesday morning and now we’re trying to find a doctor because though he sucked balls, apparently I should have driven to the market, for lemons. Thus my quick report. My kid is a sport. Now out on the trail for a doc with a sale. . .

© D A Wolf

Big Little Wolf’s Daily Plate of Crazy

Man Cave, a concept whose time has come

There are numerous varieties of man cave. A small den, filled with paraphernalia from college days, decorated in the rah-rah-raucous colors of a favorite sport, beer bottles as accessories, or mounted fish as art. Maybe there’s a poker table, worn leather furnishings. (The scent of Old Spice?)

Is there a problem with that?

So do you crave the scoop on the Man Cave? Check out Man Cave World. It’s enlightening – and funny!

And dress code? I’m thinking it isn’t designer. Sorry, Armani. Damn, and I love what you’re showing in menswear this year.

Woman cave?

Do women have their versions of the Man Cave?

The boudoir? The kitchen? Do some husbands consider the entirety of the shared abode the “woman’s place” and are they staking claim to some small area to call their own – undecorated and unscrutinized? Might this explain the Living Together – Separately phenomenon?

Mens’ Fashion for the Man Cave

Are specific men’s fashions required for the Man Cave – t-shirts to match the Mardi Gras colors of LSU? I’d like to imagine some form of fashion sensibility coordinated with moose heads and poker chips, the mascot tiger theme inlaid in wall-to-wall. Designer trends we may not see? Rugged preppy, a jolt of color in fitted sweaters. . . ah, beautiful stuff (that is no doubt welcome in the woman cave).

Global trend, Man’s new best friend?

Any input from other countries? Allô, la France? England? Australia?

Is the Man Cave purely an invention of the long-married husband? Is it like the 7-year itch? The mid-life crisis vehicle to bask in, sans wheels?

Man Cave Decorating Trends

If we accept the inevitability of the Man Cave as a necessity to happy marriage, might we at least recognize the telltale signs when they begin to appear, so we may leave the sanctity of the space intact?

Here are a few:

• Sports paraphernalia
• Big screen TV
• Games and gadgets
• Fridge for beer, grill nearby
• Clashing colors

Does Roger Federer have a Man Cave? Andrei Agassi?

I am loathe to admit that I have been unable to keep my eyes open to watch much Australian Open Tennis live. Fortunately it’s still early round play. But I wonder – does Roger Federer have a Man Cave?

Perhaps he hasn’t been married long enough. What about Andrei Agassi? He and Steffi Graf have been a couple for years. What might Andrei’s Man Cave look like?

• Does your hubby have a Man Cave?
• Does he need one?
• Do you need him to have one?

More than a look, a lifestyle?

As for the Man Cave concept, is it more than passing fashion, and a return to marital separate but equal, though unequal? A place for beer swilling, loud guffaws, arm wrestling and dart throwing, web surfing and guy talk? A (male) room of one’s own?

Gentlemen – I’m all for whatever makes you happy. Just don’t decorate my salon after your fave football team, ok ? Now as for those designer outfits, some of them are hot. A sharp blazer, a fitted sweater, just the right jeans. Of course, then you may have to come out of your Man Cave. For a little mix and mingle.

© D A Wolf

Big Little Wolf’s Daily Plate of Crazy