Eating. Super Bowl Sunday.

I have never watched football. Ever. But it is Super Bowl Sunday, and if I were to be watching the Super Bowl (which I am not), this is the sort of thing I would be eating:

Dip. In my opinion, potato chips exist solely (much as cupcakes exist solely as a mean by which to consume lots and lots of frosting) to convey dip from the bowl to your mouth. A co-worker frequently brings such magical things as onion dip (made from a mix you combine with sour cream), garlic dip (ditto, except this one also contains mayonnaise), bacon dip (which, I believe, contains fake bacon bits, which I would not ordinarily consume except in this case when they are mixed with, again, sour cream and mayonnaise), and various other dips flavored with peppers, herbs, and sundry indescribable things, to our parties at work, and when she does, I have trouble eating anything else.

And then there are tortilla chips and salsa and guacamole. I dimly remember my mother once concocting something for a party called a 'seven-layer dip,' which I had never experienced before and have never encountered since, although they sell giant tubs of it at Costco. It is the quintessential party food, with layers of guacamole and salsa and sour cream and probably scallions and peppers and sliced black olives. Possibly there were some beans involved. But usually there is salsa and guacamole, and I must confess I prefer the green creaminess of guacamole to the cool heat of salsa, but there you have it.

Wings. I spent my college years in Rochester, New York, notable for its long, cold winters buried beneath many feet of snow. And for its proximity to Buffalo, where buffalo wings were invented one night in 1964 by Teressa Bellissimo at the Anchor Bar & Restaurant. Now, I grew up eating chicken wings, but the chicken wings of my childhood were marinated in soy sauce and garlic and a few stalks of green onions smashed with the flat blade of my knife. Buffalo wings were something else, deep-fried and doused in a hot sauce that glowed a radioactive red-orange under the neon lights of the bar. They came piled on oval platters, with celery sticks and tubs of blue-cheese sauce. Dip the wings in the creamy sauce that muted their fiery spiciness. Dip the crunchy celery sticks into the coolness of blue cheese. I haven't eaten Buffalo wings since I threw four years' worth of belongings into the back of my car and drove three thousand miles west. The sun was in my eyes all the way home.

So it is Super Bowl Sunday, and I won't be watching the game. But I can imagine lounging back on a couch, watching a bunch of men run around with a ball, crashing into each other, out under the falling night and the pouring rain. And I can imagine eating all those sorts of things people eat while watching a bunch of men running around in the rain, and I raise my (imaginary) beer and reach for a handful of (imaginary) chips.