Super Bowl generation gap is ‘so mid'
One of the treats of having teenagers is encouraging them to hone their dishwashing skills and, if you’re lucky, develop acute handeye coordination by scooping out the litter box the way we did when we were their age.
They can be helpful, funny and, on occasion, not smell like used sweatsocks.
Then there’s everything else. From the outrageous cost of car insurance to endless trips to the grocery store to satisfy their bottomless pits, they really hit below the belt offering daily reminders that we, Mr. and Ms. Middle Age Adults, are not nearly as cool as we think we are. We’re so far out of touch with pop culture that they’ve gone past the usual eye rolling and straight to ignoring our every move.
They’ll cringe at our ’80s and ’90s “oldies” stations but will fight to the death to defend the need for a $110 pair of jeans with huge gashes in them.
While we might be willing to concede the music thing, their hard lessons about terms like “simp,” “no cap,” “that’s so mid,” and my personal favorite, “left me on read,” are a constant refresher that language barriers do exist. By the way being left “on read” is the modern-day version of having a door slammed in your face.
Who knew?
All this to say, worlds are colliding every time the Kansas City Chiefs and their No. 1 fan are thrown on
TV. Splash a shot of Taylor Swift screaming and pounding her hands on the glass in the luxury suites, and all of a sudden the bastion that is a parent’s tween-free Sunday routine becomes an assault on the football senses.
While we want to admire the toe-tapping ability of a receiver in the back of the end zone or the agility of a 260pound human missile attacking at full speed, the introduction of Travis Kelce’s girlfriend has brought a tsunami of kids like my own closer to the NFL.
Until now, her only interest in the league was knowing there was a team called the Jaguars, because she’s always liked cats.
They’re kids who are there only for the drama and the mind-bending reality that Taylor’s got a gaggle of teen-friendly celebs (Sabrina Carpenter? Alana Haim? Who??) flanking her every move. Most of them are virtual unknowns to us out-of-touch types.
It all merges into chaos this Super Bowl Sunday, a day when tweens like my own curious and sweet 13-year-old daughter invade the living room for the mandatory 10 to 15 spy cam shots into the Swiftie (or Swifty? Not sure …) million-dollar suite. Young Kate and her little high-pitched friends immediately hammer away online about all things Taylor the same way we did during Indy Car races back in the day — when weekend motorheads came for the race but were only interested in the wrecks.
The kids have absolutely zero interest — er, “low key don’t care” — in Sunday’s game.
“Oh my gawwd, her fit slaps.”
That’s an actual line from the actual mouth of my actual kid when Taylor and her slew of besties were shown during an Oct. 1 Chiefs game. I was about to look up what it meant on a teen slang dictionary site when she moved on to even more confusing stuff. “Who are you texting?” I asked.
“I need tea on who Sophie Turner is there with,” she said.
It may be just a passing fancy, a hiccup in time when pop culture ignites a flame that turns millions of kids like my own into curious little football pseudo-fans.
Maybe one day they’ll be interested in the score. Maybe they’ll eventually care who makes the playoffs and buy into the legacy of their own favorite football team.
Or maybe it will be a lot like my football Sundays the last three months; long gaps of shutting the world out until Kelce makes a catch and the lens swings in Swift’s direction. The inevitable shriek is a tween’s battle cry — a momentary bridge between a demographic that couldn’t care less and those of us who would probably auction off a pet to have our favorite team hoist the Lombardi Trophy.
Only then does reality set in. This perfect little kid who works just as hard to give me gray hair is typing the word “Boomer” to describe the old man watching her watch football. Thanks, Taylor.
Go Niners.