Patriotism on Superbowl Night

Tonight, Daniel mentioned that lately everyone at school has been talking about soccer. This surprised me, since Daniel was mentioning this fact on the night of the Superbowl, and "our" local team was playing in it. In fact, when I visited Ian's school, both a few weeks ago, after the initial clinching of the pre-Superbowl title, and this past Friday, the last school day before the Big Event, I saw staff wearing New England Patriots jerseys, including the principal herself. At work, likewise, you saw the occasional Patriots jersey, not to mention shoppers and employees at local stores.

So why the sudden interest, in New England, on the eve of the Superbowl, in soccer? Because Daniel confused his terminology. By "soccer" he meant "football" - basically the European usage in reverse. So technically, he meant that everybody was interested in football, or if you're the BBC, "American football."

He went on to tell me that he voted for the Patriots, and so did a lot of kids, even though Mrs. Lamkins [sic] voted for the Giants. [I never found out what this "voting" was about, but it has to be more interesting than the Republican primaries...] I asked Daniel why he voted for the Patriots. Answer: 'cause they're more likely to win. A wonderful combination of opportunistic loyalty and forecast-based-on-local-bias (I think).

I eagerly grilled Daniel to see if there were any other reason why people at school might be more enthusiastic about the Patriots than the Giants. He couldn't think of one. To my delight, geography turned out to be entirely absent from his understanding of team following.

And best of all, to my anti-collectivist sensibilities, he never used the term "Superbowl." Neither did I, since I figured that the "branding" is more than effective enough, out in the corporate-media-government Matrix, without my reinforcing this "product" label for my own, sweet, un-"conditioned" six-year-old.

Of course, he did ask me whether the Patriots had anything to do with America, or something along those lines. I think I understood the question, and I didn't manage to explain that they

were named after the people who started America - many in Boston - but they didn't have anything to do with the whole project themselves.

The very possibility that our local football team - or "soccer" - might have something particularly all-American about them was likely to make Daniel all the more devoted to this most-likely-to-win organization.

Daniel is a boy who went out of his way to get the American flag painted on his face at a county fair. (Yes, in our society, this is definitely a patriotic act.) He enthusiastically selected the American flag as the backdrop to his school picture, with his own cheerful countenance beaming against a field of stars and stripes. I don't think Daniel knows exactly what America is - I don't mean in socio-political terms, I mean literally: I'm not sure that he has any idea what, in the world, is not America. But I do know that he loves America, and of course it's a healthy impulse to love your country - the land and the people - regardless of you think of the last several decades of foreign policy.

Unsurprisingly, even in foreign policy, we're not entirely on the same page. Amy and I have clued Daniel into the fact that war involves actual casualties. Now that he knows it's not all army-guys with guns, but sometimes army-guys with severe injuries and worse - he is officially not planning on enlisting when he turns seven, or whatever the current age of enlistment might actually be. He mentioned tonight, more-or-less verbatim, "I hope when I grow up I don't forget that I'm not gonna be a army-guy." We hope that too.

But Daniel's heart is in the right place. He loves his country. He would like to defend it in a very hands-on way. He likes the home-team and hopes they win - especially if they're about America.

But I really think it's wonderful that, this evening, literally while the Superbowl was taking place, Daniel didn't know that his team was the local team, that the game is called the Superbowl, or the definitive name of the sport.

As they'd say in the land that brought us Freedom Fries, "Vive la difference."

(February 5, 2012)