Niners

From the early 1990s to the early 2000s, I became a fairly strong 49ers fan. Sometimes, I think that was linked to my involvement in Fantasy Football (with a certain former lefty San Fran QB anchoring my team as I won my league’s championship).

As San Fran made it back to the Super Bowl yesterday, to return after an 18 year hiatus, I remarked about how things had changed in our lives since the Niners smashed San Diego 49-26 (double check this score) to win Super Bowl XXIX.

We’ve never been big for hosting Super Bowl parties but for some reason we did that night. We hosted the gathering (at our first house) on that January day in 1995.

Holly was a little tike that night. I don’t know that she remembers the specifics of Super Bowl XXIX. She likes to tell a story about how she was put to bed early one night when we were hosting a bash and that she snuck down the hall and swiped some Doritos.

Maybe this was that night, I suggested. She shrugged her shoulders. Maybe.

In any case, we became such big Steve Young fans in our household that his book, Forever Young, became a Christmas gift the next year.

The year of ’95 was a good one for us in many ways. First and foremost, that was the year Paul was born.

As the Niners were celebrating their win in Atlanta yesterday and their impending appearance in Super Bowl XLVII, I mentioned to Paul the last time they were in the Super Bowl, and then I paused.

How do you say it?:

• You were ‘on the way.’
• You were ‘expected.’
• Your mother was ‘expecting.’

In any case, I stumbled around the obvious and got the point across. Paul was born a few months after the Niners won their fifth Super Bowl.

These days, I’m not a rabid fan. I’ve signed over my allegiance to the Titans. When Holly and I saw the two teams play in Nashville in  November  2005, we were clearly rooting for the home team.

Still, it is a pleasant thought to see the guys in red and gold back in the big game and that is especially the case when you juxtapose their last appearance with where we were in life to this appearance and where we are now.

If Holly and Paul were ‘just starting out’ in ’95, look at where they are in ’13. They’re both about to graduate from their respective schools. They’re making plans for the next chapter.

Last night, Paul had a party with all of his pals and while we were upstairs watching the AFC game – to see who would match up against San Fran – we snuck downstairs and swiped a few chips FOR Holly!

It’s funny how we, as parents, measure time. You can achieve this by placing a ruler next to the closet door and adding tick marks as a child grows. You can do it when you hear a song from a particular year or period in your life. And, as it seems we so often do in our house, you consider a news (or sporting) event and where it fell along your timeline.

Super Bowls. World Series. Olympics. Presidential Inaugurals. Major News Events.

I guess that’s one way time is marked in the house of two parents who met and fell in love when they were in journalism school. And maybe that’s the way the next generation will carry it forward when they, too, begin marking the passing of time.

JG

(Source: nfl.com)

Originally posted 1/21/2013