What To Do When The Towel Rack Falls Down On Super Bowl Sunday (and your favourite team is playing, and you have already missed most of pregame show)

... because you spent so much time preparing not one, not two, but three different fowl for your annual Super Bowl turducken ritual.

Fortunately, my dear wife was a true sport today, on this day of days for this hopelessly incurable NFL fan, by assisting in poultry preparation. For you see, turducken (with this writer's recipe) requires complete and utter deboning. Which normally leads to complete and utter exhaustion and depletion of resources for me. However, my live-in BFF came to my emotional rescue and did about half of the deboning for me. This saved me lots of time and energy, and after shoving the birds into the oven, I headed for the shower with lots of pregame still remaining.

Alas, when I was toweling off following my shower, in my great haste I managed to give the towel rack a solid elbow to the chin (Gordie Howe style). In rapid succession, the holder fell off the wall, the horizontal pole fell vertical, and the remaining towels slid down to the floor, to my great horror. "Oh no! Why did this have to happen on Super Bowl Sunday?"

Partly because we share our suite with a friend, and partly because of my own obsessiveness not to leave a big mess in the bathroom, I set about to fix the disaster, while attempting to keep my grumbling to a minimum. Despite my anxiety over missing all the hype prior to the big game with my favourite team playing against my third favourite team, I managed to pound plastic anchors into the large holes in the drywall, and reattached the towel rack holder. I also managed to have the presence of mind to find the new set of tiny screwdrivers with which I could tighten the set screws to make the entire towel rack assembly solid enough to hold three towels again. Then, I quickly hung up the towels, put my tools away, and dashed off to the television set.

I don't know how much pregame I missed doing my repair job. I usually don't watch much pregame discussions anyway, because the talking heads really don't know what's going to happen on any given day, let alone in the game we are about to watch. You would think I would have the typical satisfaction of having conquered a problem, having fixed something that is broken, and made it better than it was before. But, I still couldn't get over the whole ordeal, and kept asking myself the same question: Why did the towel rack have to fall down on Super Bowl Sunday?

Some things never change

It was the 13th of January, 1973, a Saturday. I was 17 and spent the afternoon at the movies with my sister. We were both oblivious to what was happening outside the theatre. Unusual for a midwinter day in Saskatchewan, it was raining. What we didn't realize was that we wouldn't make it home that night.

We drove off from the city in the early darkness to our farm home some forty miles away. Our parents awaited our arrival in the family car at the house nestled in the hills. The only problem was that the freezing rain would not allow us to climb the hills on the highway. We were not alone in our plight.

After seeing a long line of cars ahead of us, marooned at the base of a huge hill, we were fortunate to meet a friend who was driving the opposite direction, back to the city. We were both afraid to drive anymore, having slid into the ditch once already, so were parked our car on an approach to a field and hooked a ride with my friend to our grandmother's house in the city for the night.

The next morning, the sun came out bright and hot and we knew that it would be safe to get back to our car and drive home. When my grandma asked me if I wanted to go to church in the city, I instantly declined, stating that I really needed to get home. The reason that I needed to get home was that I had my own personal schedule to watch the Super Bowl that day.

Once I arrived home, I sequestered myself in the small, dark study room with a little black and white television and watched the Miami Dolphins complete their perfect season with a 14-7 victory over the Washington Redskins. The game itself wasn't all that exciting, as Miami's defense dominated the Redskins all afternoon. The offense managed to score a pair of touchdowns on two long drives and led 14-0 until a miracle play near the end gave Washington a touchdown when Miami's kicker, Garo Yepremian, a Cypriot (famous for saying "I keek a touchdown") picked up his blocked field goal attempt and tried to throw a pass that went the wrong way.

But, I was pleased. I had seen the big game and the experience is still etched in my memory, decades later. Today, the Super Bowl is a much bigger deal, watched by millions and millions of people. I even considered attending the game in person this year, as my favourite team, the New Orleans Saints, actually made it to the big game for the first time in their history. I couldn't have gone in 1973, but I could have made the arrangements to attend this year. How times have changed. However, some things never change.

Although I am a retired father of three, and married to my sweetheart English graduate student, I will feel like that 17 year old boy again this Sunday as I cheer on my Saints in Super Bowl XLIV. I don't need to see it in person; I don't need to go to a bar with multiple big screens. I can still watch the game in my little house on my narrow little television, and still thoroughly enjoy the experience. I loved football way back then, and my love of the game has grown immensely from those days. If the Saints win, I will be like a happy little boy, and if the Indianapolis Colts win, I will still be happy, as they are my third favourite NFL team. Football is a great diversion that continues to thrill me. I am really glad that some things never change.