Super Bowl Sunday

I made the mistake of promising a blog entry regarding Super Bowl.


Throughout that Sunday evening, I was wondering what my angle would be. What would be the story. I did not have too much to go on.

Let's face it, it's a football game.

I still don't understand it even after 20 years of living in the U.S. Deep down I wish we had a second television so I could watch the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice again. Every half an hour, I could call out "Just coming" and go back to ogling Colin Firth again.

If I had not been blessed with boys, I don't think I would even have known about the existence of Superbowl. But having boys has opened up many new vistas.....

When I was growing up, I was the girliest girl there was. I wore a lot of pink, plenty of ribbons, took ballet lessons and even though we were an immigrant family of modest means I somehow had full ownership of a total of EIGHTEEN dolls by the age of 10.


But being a mother of boys has been a thrilling experience. There was nothing for it but to embrace boy culture. Loud burps, healthy appetites, flatulence jokes, Steven Seagal movies( OK maybe not Seagal).

When my 2 eldest boys were toddlers, we were living in San Francisco. I used to take them to a parenting center which was run by a Jewish organization. For one whole dollar, tired mothers could spend an entire day there, chatting with other tired (mostly Jewish ) moms and their toddlers would be well taken care of in a very fancy play area with huge plastic play structures, lego and clay stations. They also offered parenting classes, counseling on a sliding scale and gourmet coffee.

My border-line agnostic French friend Celine and I would spend many a happy afternoon there. Celine would say-" Mon Dieu! zee Jewish people, zey got it going on." One day I was checking the memo board and amongst the ads for Hebrew lessons and Bah Mitzvah practices, I saw that they were offering a class named "Mothers of Boys" so naturally I signed up. It was exciting for me to simply be child-free for a full 2 hours as I sipped cappucino with the other moms. The session proved to be very useful covering topics like boy energy, the teen-age years, sports and so on. Even though most of my classmates came from a world of nannies and piano lessons, we found plenty in common with our new-found situation.

At the end of the class, someone asked a curious question.
"When I was growing up, I loved being a girl, I thought it was best thing in the world. Where does this leave me now that I am a mother of 2 boys. How can I break it to them that they are NOT the best thing there is?

I thought about this for a very long time- years, I believe.

It wasn't until I entered the field of teaching that I got a true appreciation of boys and boy-ness and saw the other side of the coin of feminity. I really began to appreciate their casual attitude towards life. I thought back to my own childhood and the constant fights with other girls- not physical but what my cousin who is a cop calls "Jedi Mind Games" -

..she looked at me funny, I'm not her friend, I'm not sitting next to you.



These were our punches, our body slams and broken noses.


There was a purpose behind them also. We were trying to maneuver and figure out our place, our self esteem. But I am not sure if Society realizes how destructive and how needy some of those girls are. I saw evidence of cattiness and exclusion in girls as early as Kindergarten and by second grade it was an established problem. I had students who could not sleep at night because of playground disagreements and truly I remember participating in that melodrama in my own childhood.

( Oh dear, where DID that Superbowl article go??)


What was interesting to me was that it was an established fact in the staff room that boys are physical, boys are violent, boys need to hit each other. But what savvy teachers and parents know is that it is simply pent-up aggression. But I firmly believe (and there have been a few books written to support this view) that girls have very similiar pent-up energy. They need sports and other outlets for that energy. This is something that often gets over-looked in parochial schools and into adolescence and adult-hood.

I had never considered the role of prima donna or drama queen to be a troublesome one mainly because I had BEEN one for much of my life! But when I had a few in my class-room I saw how destructive girls can be towards each other.

At one of the schools where I worked, I asked for some help with teaching gym. The new teacher arrived. I was hoping for an athletic type. He was wearing a plain white kurtha and pyjama, leather socks and a turban on his head and made absolutely no eye contact. I wasn't sure how this would work.

Asalamalaikum, my name is Sohail. I'm the new gym teacher. What would you like me to teach them today? A Tabliqi Jamat co-teacher of gym?? But he was so caring, compassionate and loving with the kids. They all adored him. He ended up being the pied piper of Morton Grove and broke down all stereotypes I had about men in long bushy beards and white kurthas.

One day Sohail came to me rather despondent, complaining that it was hard to motivate the girls to play any serious sports.
"Ms Shereen, they say everything is boring or hard and don't want to try".

I was disappointed in my fellow females and felt like they were letting down an entire gender classification. I was determined that we could be just as athletic as our brothers.

Sohail spent 4 days teaching the students basketball theory- the rules, strategies and so on. Finally on day 5, they got to play. I was proud of a group of rather giggly girls who had really begun to embrace this game. They got into their positions, focused on throwing the ball around and even managed to get in a hoop or 2. Then one of the girls, a sweet Bosnian girl named Amarah caught the ball and began looking around for team-mates. Sohail was the team captain and began urging her " pass it pass it" one of the girls called out "I'm open I'm open!" So Amarah took one look at her and said:

"I was going to pass it to you but I'm not your friend any more, remember?" And she immediately turned to another classmate who was actually on the other team but of course, a friend of hers.

Sohail immediately collapsed on the floor, defeated. "Ms Shereen?" he asked. "What now?

What indeed.

Pardon the sweeping generalizations. There are many notable exceptions and Sohail was certainly one of them but-
We women do tend to have a heightened sense of compassion which is commendable. But we often "feel" so very much that we become disappointed or defensive when the compassion is not returned somehow.


Men could do with more compassion. Or to know how to express it, or just to know that it is all right to do so.


Oh and the Superbowl? So in my lifelong quest to share a little of my boys' world, I made up my mind I would conquer my fear of watching this game. No longer would my offspring CRINGE when I asked questions like "Er Superbowl, that's baseball, right? Have the Oakland A's ever made it?" "How many goals is that now?"


So here's a play by play account of when we watched the game at our house. The commentators are my 3 sons.


Mom, you're going to watch the game with us this time. Please, please. No, you can't just come in at the half-time show to sing along to "The Who" songs.


So with the help of my boys, and respected elders Imam Google and Great Uncle Wikipedia, I think I began to formulate a rudimentary understanding of the game.



Mom, are you following this?


Yes, good job, Mom, 2nd down 5 yards to go.

Remember what a down is? There are 10 of them in each...


Mom, Mom???

Ok how about I simplify further, the guys in gold do you see them? Yes, they need to get the ball all the way over to the left side.

No, no you HAVE to support the guys in gold. The other guys beat Chicago last year but more importantly, well they are New Orleans, remember Hurricane Katrina, well we are rooting for them.

So I found myself cheering for the survivors of Katrina, Haiti, Darfur, Gaza, every downtrodden, troubled part of the world. And suddenly, I cared about who won.

I began screaming sentences like " Did you see Drew Brees" " What a touchdown!"


That was it. I was finally accepted. Next stop on the Mother of Boys train: How to Play Poker.