HARBESON: Not such a super Sunday
It had to happen eventually. I couldn’t keep writing this column indefinitely without having to make a public apology at some point.
Something horrible happened this week and I’m afraid it’s my fault. I think I caused the Indianapolis Colts to lose the Super Bowl.
See, over the years I’ve noticed a pattern: If my Super Bowl party preparations go badly, the team I root for almost always loses. If the food and drink I planned are not perfectly prepared, for some reason the football gods get upset with me and favor the other team.
I thought I had my problem covered this year because the guests did the real cooking. All I had to do was prepare a couple of no-cook recipes. I didn’t want to take any chances, so I awoke early to slap together what should have been an extremely simple recipe for chocolate pie. I only had to mix whipped cream with uncooked pudding mix and dump it into a pre-made pie crust.
However, as I dumped, I dropped the bowl onto the crust, which completely shattered under the weight. I picked up the bowl and half the crust stuck to it. My perfect pie was in pieces. I didn’t know what to do. It was going to be harder to repair the crust than to tape Dwight Freeney’s ankle correctly.
Oh, if only trans-fats were banned around here, this never would have happened. I tried to replace the pieces, but finally I had to just redump it and cover the mess with the rest of the filling. I prayed the football gods wouldn’t notice.
Besides, I still had a chance for redemption because I had another recipe to make. Again it was very simple, no actual cooking necessary.
But, I forgot the olives. Now, you may think olives aren’t essential, but this wasn’t a simple relish tray, where tightly stuffed olives roll around, acting salty, and playing mostly a decorative role, like cheerleaders. No, in this recipe olives are vital. I heard a low grumbling and knew it was the football gods.
I was pretty sure I’d ruined it for the Colts, but I realized I had one more chance because I also planned on serving white Russians, which meant another easy recipe to mix. This was my last shot for success, so to speak.
So when my son-in-law suggested that it would be fun to dye the drinks blue, I heartily agreed. Surely that would be enough to change the bad luck I created! Surely this would reverse the chain of events I started that could adversely affect the Colts!
The drinks did turn a nice shade of Colts blue and also helped delude me into believing the Colts might still make it, despite my failed relationship with the football gods. But it turns out that messing with The Dude’s favorite drink only made the football gods more irritated.
Even though it was late afternoon, I was still hopeful that somehow I could do something so the Colts would be able to rise above the mess I created. But I was hit with one final blow when — in the middle of a day where I had so far managed to completely forget about politics — CBS interviewed President Obama. The football gods obviously did that just to irritate me.
This was a clear message that there was nothing I could do for the Colts now, so I just sat back and decided to focus on the commercials. That’s usually the real reason I watch the Super Bowl anyway, something I suspect the football gods knew all along.
SIGLINE:
— Sellersburg resident Debbie Harbeson often battles with sports gods and loses.
