I am not one of those people who ridicule one of our most sacred Corporate Holidays, Super Bowl Sunday. Lots of people love it and enjoy it and almost everyone I know is going to a Super Bowl Part of one kind or another to drink beer, eat chicken wings and pizza and popcorn, watch the ads and even follow the ad stretced game, now stretched from one hour to nearly four. I have to confess that I have never been invited to a Super Bowl Sunday Party, never been to one. Even my good friend George Forss, the photograph and alien investigations officer is going to a Super Bowl Party today – he is invited every year.

It perhaps says something about me that I will not be watching the Super Bowl today and will likely never be invited to sample wings with the guys.  We don’t even have a TV, although I suppose I could stream it on the Ipad. It’s interesting from the perspective of the blog, there are fewer people on my site on Super Bowl than on Christmas and those that are on the site are people who – like me – live outside of the tent. It’s nice and intimate on bedlamfarm.com. Usually there are 50 or 60 questions for me on Sunday, today perhaps a dozen.  I can’t follow football, it is too complex and loud for me and it is painful to see these huge men crash into one another with so much force. It hurts me to watch. I do not disapprove of the things other people do. I understand that the Super Bowl, like Black Friday, brings the greatest joy and pleasure to people but it used to be a lonely kind of day for me, as I was reminded that I am different from most people.

I’ve learned to accept this and do my own event planning.

This morning, Maria and I planned our own Super Bowl Day. We spent an hour together watching You Tube Animal Videos – a first for me, but we both kind of loved it (dolphins, dogs, coyotes, kittens) and we will take a walk in the sure to be deserted park nearby. This afternoon we will go to see “Lincoln” at a movie theater in Vermont, and then hole up and read books. I plan on reviewing the new Ben Schrank novel I am reading.

I think Super Bowl has become a powerful ritual for men, and they have few rituals these days. I know women watch the game and families also, but there is something extremely male about it at the core. How many things draw so many men together in one another’s homes. It is really too much hype and noise for me, and I can’t bring myself to really care who wins.  I learned later in life not to feel badly about being outside the tent. It is a comfortable place for me, a place I belong. A place I live. It is good, finally, to learn who you are. And are not.