Now that the whole super bowl thing is but a distant and stupid memory, I'm ready to resume sisterhood with my archrival, Claire. Well, I'm going to try. Losing to my trash-talking big-sister-who-always-wins-everything is not something that goes down easily.
Loser! Let me tell you what it felt like to be a loser when my team, the Pittsburgh Steelers -- the team I have supported since graduate school -- lost the AFC championship title to the New England Patriots in a heartbreaking work of staggering incompetence (we choked).
Well, no. Let me not tell you what it felt like. Let's just move . . . on. Move on is what, of course, the Patriots did, to the Super Bowl. My sister's team, the Philadelphia Eagles, likewise moved on to the big game.
Loser! Let me tell you what it felt like to be a loser on the same day that my sister emerged the winner of the NFC champion-ship title. Let me tell you that this is exactly how it has been between us ever since we started playing Go Fish and Crazy Eights and Kerplunk!, that game with marbles in a tube with sticks poking through -- you pull the sticks out, and if you pull the wrong stick the marbles fall, "kerplunk!" and so does your pride. Kerplunk, kerplunk, kerplunk, this is my life story if I have to include Claire in the narrative.
Take her out! This has been my life's goal. Beat Claire at one blessed thing. The 2004 NFL season seemed like my big chance. Her team was good (13-3 in the regular season), but my team (15-1) was better. Postseason behavior got ugly between us. It got to its ugliest during the first playoff game, when my team was losing to the New York Jets, during which time Claire kept calling me to rub my face in the loss, until we were really losing, and then she called to apologize for being so mean, to say she really did want my team to win. She was feeling sorry for me? This was always her victory dance. This, as any loser knows, is the final kick in the pants.
In a freakish turn of events, my team won that game, but Claire did not call to say congratulations. In fact, she and I did not speak for weeks. I did not call to congratulate her for advancing to the Super Bowl. The silence gave me a chance to practice what I would say if the unthinkable happened: if Little Miss Victorious Face were to actually win the Big One. "Football?" I would say. "Oh, are you still talking about football? That is so yesterday." I would tell her about all the more important things in life. I would speak of volunteering for important causes and finding a real reason for living.
The moral victory! It was, I reasoned, all I had left. I didn't care if I had to lie, cheat or steal. I would win it.
Claire broke the silence four days before the Super Bowl. She called not to say hello, but rather to launch into a tirade. "You should be glad your team isn't in the Super Bowl!" she shouted, explaining her disgust with the media hype that had invaded the City of Brotherly Love. "Why do we pay attention to all this gibberish from these big fat men who can't put two sentences together? I can't take it! Why don't we talk about something that matters in life?" She went on and on about this, reinventing the rules of our game with her holier-than-thou talk, which I had planned to do myself, but here she was beating me even to that. I had only one punch left: I asked her if this high horse she was riding was in any way a defense against the fact that her team was widely expected to lose.
"I don't care!" she shouted. "I can say from the depths of my soul that the outcome of this game will make no difference in my life. You should be glad you get to move on with your life."
"Well, I am glad," I lied. "I . . . am." And so there we had it. Little Ms. Virtuous Head with the clean soul, and me, a loser with a tainted one.
Kerplunk.
So, Claire's team lost to the Patriots, but only by three measly points. A dainty ker-plink compared with our 14-point loss to that team in the playoffs. Claire and I spoke the morning after, and she said it didn't matter; she launched into something really irritating about how watching the game was for her a wonderful "family time," a chance to share an experience and make memories with her children. I didn't tell her that I was rooting for her team to lose, shouting at the TV so loud my children complained about the noise. I didn't think it was necessary. I've made my peace with my maker, thanking God that football is over and promising a lot of good deeds in exchange for just one stinkin' victory, somewhere, somehow.
Jeanne Marie Laskas's e-mail address is post@jmlaskas.com.
