Tape-Delay Sandwiches

It's important to have traditions -- no matter how strange they are.

One of our traditions is taping the SuperBowl and watching it at midnight with a bunch of friends. We fast-forward through the commercials and the half-time show and get the whole thing over with by about 3am.

I think it all started with a Sunday School lesson a few years ago, where we were teaching a class of teenaged boys about "keeping the Sabbath Day holy." We tried to keep it simple: spend your time doing good things, and try to avoid labour and your regular diversions to make Sunday a special day. That's not good enough for a class of teenagers. They wanted definitive answers to a host of hypothetical Sunday scenarios:

- Should you buy things on ebay?
- Should you have a snowball fight?
- Should you play sports?
- Should you watch sports?
- Should you play video games?
- Should you watch someone playing sport-themed video games?
- Should you do your homework on Sunday? What if your homework is to read a classic novel?
- Should you swim in the lake if your family is away camping? Does it matter if the lake is in a different time zone? etc. etc.

At some point the SuperBowl was mentioned, because it is always played on a Sunday. Many of the boys said they were planning on watching it, mainly because they didn't want to miss out on such a big sporting event. To make a point, one of adult leaders said that the boys could tape the game and come over to his house and watch it at midnight, just so that they could feel like they made a token effort to leave Sunday for other pursuits.

The boys came out in droves, and they quite liked the experience. We liked it too, so we still do it -- even after all those boys have grown older and moved on. I think we just like to stay up at night and eat steak sandwiches. Who wouldn't?

It's kind of like a family reunion tradition that we have: At 11pm, we break out the Risk 2210 board and play a quick 5-hour game. By 4am, people are completely out of it, but that's an integral part of the experience -- it's as much a part of the tradition as SmartFood Cheese Flavoured Popcorn.

If all of this doesn't make much sense to you, come back at 3am and I'll explain it again. It will make perfect sense then.