The Child Is the Father to the Fan

And to think that this summer, when my son hung a little "NY" key chain on his backpack, I thought it was just an unattractive little tourist thing he'd picked up.

"Mom, it's the Giants logo," my 9-year-old said.

He loves that key chain. I love him, and thus began my introduction to a thing called "football."

Also, "fandom."

In this sense, having a child turns out to be like having an exchange student. Except instead of learning the folklore of Peru, you start learning things like, "Mom, did you know Michael Strahan leads the NFL in sacks?"

Did I know? Oh, little boy, better you should ask, "Mom, did you know that a sack is when someone tackles the quarterback, who, by the way, is in charge of throwing the ball, which is called a 'pass'?"

But the little boy didn't really care that the mom was as ignorant of football as she was of astrophysics. He didn't hold it against her that she kept saying Umi Whatshisname instead of Osi Umenyiora. And he didn't even notice that she was so bored with hearing about the importance of defense that she only used these discussions as a lure to get him to walk a little faster (than a snail) to school.

"Let's pick up the pace a little! And tell me, What's a first down again?"

So many explanations. "A down is …" "A punt is …" "Osi Umenyiora …" "Mom, that was the shortest walk ever!"

At the schoolyard, he whips out the Nerf football he keeps stashed in his backpack and leaps up like Snoopy when he throws it to his friend. The principal yells: "No ball playing!"

He glowers and puts it away.

Seconds later, the ball is whizzing through the air again. This time, the principal intercepts like Corey Webster. And I, who'd always hated it when wild boys threw balls around, think silently, "It's just a Nerf ball!"

"It's just a Nerf ball!" wails my son.

He slumps against the fence, head down like Charlie Brown.

Thank god there's football at recess.

After school, he's sunny again. Art was great! Out from the backpack where all homework crumples into oblivion comes a perfectly flat sheet of paper he worked on all period. Red background. Blue letters. "NY," just like the key chain.

So we watch the games as the season goes by. We bond with cousins. We bond with strangers wearing the logo jackets that used to mean "someone I have zero in common with." We bond with other parents in the fourth-grade flag football league, which just happens to meet Saturday nights, 6-8, as if that could be any imposition at all.

And then, finally, it's Super Bowl Sunday. One friend tells me she's going skating. Another is going to sit at home, reading — just like me, until now.

Was I nuts? This is the Super Bowl! But my husband was the same way. We've been married forever and not a Buffalo wing between us. Now it's 4 o'clock, and I'm marinating the chicken in Tabasco while he's setting up some spanking new high-def projector so we can watch the game on our living room wall. We take down our French poster for the occasion.

Soon friends are over, the game is on the wall, and the Giants are down. "Learning to handle disappointment is a development skill that sports help foster," my child psychologist buddy says.

"Shh!" says her daughter.

It's too tense. I can't take it. I missed all those years of learning how to handle disappointment through sports. I go in the bedroom.

And then I hear it.

Screaming. Joyous screaming?

"What? What?!" I run back in.

"We won! We won!" cries my son. "The Giants won the Super Bowl!" He's doing the Snoopy dance again. "We won!"

So I guess he's not learning anything about disappointment this time around.

Neither am I, but that's OK.

I've learned enough.

Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at The New York Sun and Advertising Age. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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