Super Bowl Memory Shuffle

My memory stinks. I was reminded of that by site curator and Randy Newman fan, who asked if I’d ever covered a Super Bowl. I covered one – Super Bowl 20 in New Orleans in Jan. 1986, when the Bears demolished the Patriots.

Rob responded that he still has vivid memories of that game and those teams. Alas, I do not. I recall several things from that week and that game. Mostly, I remember massive anxiety about trying not to mess it up and wondering how the hell to adequately convey what I witnessed.

The only reason I was assigned to go to the Super Bowl was that the boss’s wife was either about to give birth or had just done so (did I mention my memory?). He was the sports section’s primary columnist, and he wouldn’t leave his wife and new son for a week. I had been at the paper all of 16 months, had covered only one season’s worth of college games and exactly one NFL game. I was no more qualified to cover the Super Bowl than to perform dental surgery.

When the boss told me that he intended to send me to New Orleans, I reminded him that I’d covered one
NFL game in my life. His deadpan response: Yeah, but it was a good one. He assured me I’d do fine, and I’d have plenty of help since I was going with our assistant sports editor, who was also the Redskins’ beat writer and had covered the NFL for years. Lean on him, the boss said, and do what he says. Which I did. (Side note: One of the NFL’s great competitive transgressions was that D-lineman William “The Refrigerator” Perry scored a Super Bowl touchdown and Walter Payton did not, in a game in which the Bears could have named the final score.)

I was fortunate that my job was essentially a running draft of history. If I needed to know something, chances are that someone had written about it – perhaps even me – and I didn’t have to rely on memory. I covered lots of coaches and athletes who had darn near photographic recall of games and sequences from weeks and years prior, which was a benefit. Plenty of colleagues have terrific memories, as well, and can rattle off details from games and road trips and conversations that I only vaguely remember. 

I cannot attribute my shoddy memory to age, although that doesn’t help. I doubt I could have told you any more about that Super Bowl 15 years ago than today. I once forgot my mom’s birthday by an entire month. Had the right date; brain-locked on the month. Nowadays, I forget things so frequently that the dog thinks the path out of the house consists of: go to the door, turn around and go back to the kitchen or bedroom, pick up something and put it in my pocket, then leave.

Chuck Swenson is in this photo.
Learned from the best.

It may be that my memory is more disordered than hopeless. There’s plenty of stuff rattling around in my head, far too much of it useless or un-interesting. For example, I vividly remember a William and Mary basketball practice in which Chuck Swenson was so torqued off at his players’ effort and execution that he punted a ball into a corner of William and Mary Hall and stormed off the court, leaving his assistants to finish practice. However, my memories of Super Bowl 20 and Duke-Kentucky in the 1992 NCAA Tournament, a.k.a., The Laettner Game, are spotty, at best.

Anyway, I suggest that as memory fades and memories accumulate we keep tangible reminders of favored people and experiences. Write things down. Snap pictures. Download to safe spaces. Collect keepsakes, if you have room for such things. Years ago, friends had a big wicker bowl in their living room and gradually filled it with mementos: ticket stubs, matchbooks, shot glasses, knick-knacks, stickers, hats, travel brochures, menus, corks from wine bottles. The contents jogged the memory and sometimes made an interesting conversation starter for friends and visitors. My wife and I took two vacation trips to Europe. I kept a notebook each time in which I wrote at least once a day about the stuff we saw and did. They’re a treasure of wonderful times worth revisiting. 

If only I could remember where I stowed them. 

Live image of OBX Dave's brain, memory bank portion