Chipley, Florida<\/a>, where people came from all over to see if “the Jew baby had horns.” My great-grandfather had to travel a couple of hours to Alabama to buy kosher meat to bring back for my barely-spoke English great-grandmother. My maternal grandfather (whom I called Abba) was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. My mother, while born in Memphis, moved before her memory even kicked in and spent all of her formative years in a suburb of New Orleans. My mom comes by the “y’all” honestly, and it doesn’t take too much riling up to get her accent out.<\/p>\nLet’s move to football. Once upon a time, I cared a great deal about football. Abba was a serious fan. He had season tickets for the Dolphins for as long as I could remember, and occasionally, I’d get to go see, first Bob Griese, and then Dan Marino play. Abba would travel to watch the Dolphins and he was at the ’73 Super Bowl when the Dolphins had that unforgettable year. I became interested in late high school, when it was a fun way to hang out with Abba. We could bond over the Dolphins. When I lived in Seattle, football was amazing because it was never on past my bedtime, and I had two good from-Miami Beach buddies who would, week after week, go to the sports bars with me at 10 a.m. for beer, fries, and Dolphins. <\/p>\n
But then kids came along and I became a Dolphins fan in name only. Sure, if they’re on network TV and it’s not starting past my bedtime, I’ll watch. But I have no idea who is who. As Dave Barry once put it, at this point I’m pretty much just routing for the color. I do watch enough to know that the evil man Jimmy Buffet replaced the Dolphin’s fight song at touchdown with a stupid Landshark song, but my loyalty is pretty much a remnant of the past that shall always remain. I follow playoffs, I watch the Super Bowl, but I’m not as invested as I used to be. Perhaps one day I’ll have a good team again, my kids will be big enough I can lounge on Sundays, and I’ll be able to spend a little time caring.<\/p>\n
Okay, this is the part where we bring everything together: Deep South mom and football. My mother knows exactly two things about football: 1) Peyton Manning, the quarterback for some team, went to Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, which is the same school she attended and 2) Peyton’s little brother, Eli, the quarterback for a different team, also went to Newman. <\/p>\n
But suddenly my mother has found a bandwagon. And she’s jumped on it. In an e-mail last week to me and my father, she announced, “Okay, I care about the Super Bowl. Geaux Saints.”<\/p>\n
My father had to point out that the Saints weren’t in the Super Bowl yet, and she’d have to get through a playoff game. Her response, “Oh shit. That means I have to watch two games.”<\/p>\n
Tonight I went out and had a lovely dinner with Pie at a friend’s house (a friend who is so creative and engaged with her kids that she makes the rest of us look really, really bad. I know you read this! Stop that now!). I got home and Adam was putting Pie to bed, so I started cooking a little dinner for him (I’ll take cooking for anyone any day over putting her to bed) and I turned on the game. It was a commercial, so I called my mom. <\/p>\n
“I just got home and it’s a commercial. What’s going on in the game so far?”<\/p>\n
My mom replied, “Um, the Jets lost?”<\/p>\n
“Yes, I know that. What about the Saints game. The one that’s on right now?”<\/p>\n
Silence for a minute. “Um, I forgot. Let me go turn it on.” We hang up.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later she calls back. “It’s not on!”<\/p>\n
“Yes, it is. Of course it is. Put on Fox.”<\/p>\n
“Oh. I guess it’s a commercial.”<\/p>\n
Theoretically she’s watching the game right now. Ask her who the quarterback for the Saints is. She won’t know. He went to high school in Texas. Geaux Saints.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many of you know that my father is, proudly, from New Jersey. Don’t go teasin’ with any of that “What exit are you?” He’ll have none of that. But you may not know that my mother is an actual Southerner. I don’t mean Miami Beach. Plenty of people have asked me what it’s like to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,8,21],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-football","tag-my-family","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}