Before I got into the fast-paced world of italicizing words for a living, I spent a couple years as a teacher for a non-profit afterschool program in the South End.
The Monday after the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl, I found myself very, very hungover at work. One of my students, a seven-year old with a body of a high school sophomore and the brain of a precocious preschooler, congratulated me on the hometown victory.
“Mr. JPat, it is good that your team won.”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“But Mr. JPat … why didn’t your team win all the other times?”
It dawned on me then that this kid had been born right at that time when Boston decided it was going to start beating everybody in everything. For the entirety of his admittedly brief existence, he had lived in a city where title rings were as abundant as bread mold. A sports team—or a city, for that matter—just straight up consistently sucking was something that was entirely foreign to him. I was going to have to explain to him the concept of failure.
A week before, another kid had asked me what happens when you die.
Honestly, this one was harder.
So. If the Patriots do take home trophy number obscene this Sunday, remember that you live someplace that’s so good at winning that it’s raised children that don’t know what it means to lose. That’s not just winning—that’s winning winning.
PS: Oh, and just in case—the Mannings are dead to me. Do with them what you will.
© 1999-2012 Dig Publishing LLC. All Rights Reserved. 
