My brother Bruce called me on Monday saying he needed my help.
"Our season tickets won the Super Bowl Ticket lottery, so we have the right to purchase two tickets to the Super Bowl. However, you need to go to the stadium for me to pick them up. Also, would you mind putting the $1700 charge on your credit card, because you have to present the credit card used to pay for the tickets when you pick them up. I'll pay you 10% of whatever we make on the resale of them for your trouble."
Since Bruce lives in Tucson, it made it a little difficult for him to show up on Wednesday afternoon at Sports Authority Field to pick up the tickets. I agreed to help him out, because brothers help each other out. The 10% legwork fee was a nice bonus. So, on Wednesday afternoon, I drove over to the brewery downtown where my father works to pick him up. I had to procure my dad, because although Bruce pays for the tickets each year for the past several years, the season ticket rights are still technically in my Dad's name. In order to pick up the tickets, the actual rights holder had to be present.
I figured if I could do this without my father actually being present, it would be less hassle for everyone. I arrived downtown much earlier than I needed to, so I thought I'd go to the box office and give it a shot. My Dad's first name is the same as my middle name so I tried going to the stadium and see if that would be good enough to con the ticket agent into letting me pick up the tickets.
The ticket office was having none of it, so I picked up my Dad and 40 minutes later reappeared at the box office and after a few minutes of reviewing all of our assorted documentation, I was handed an envelope with two Super Bowl tickets and a MetLife Stadium map. This was surreal enough, as even getting your mitts on these tickets is a rare enough accomplishment in and of itself. I took some pictures with them as one does with Super Bowl tickets, but never REALLY thought I would do anything other than UPS them off to someone who paid my brother thousands for the privilege of attending the big game with Roman numerals.
Wednesday night passed, as did Thursday, and then Friday...The tickets were starting to weigh heavy on me as if I were Frodo and those tickets were the One Ring. I somehow refrained from calling the tickets, "My precious", but I was beginning to wonder if they'd ever be sold. I wasn't too keen on the huge charge on my credit card just sitting there when the method to paying it off was just sitting in an envelope. I was wondering if we'd ever find out where these tickets were going.
Bruce was about 80% set on going to the Super Bowl and he had a line on another pair of tickets (via the Oakland Raiders, which drips with irony since we hate the Raiders), but he wasn't going to find out about them until the weekend, so I figured that he was waiting to see if he'd get these other tickets, or if he would just use the tickets I was holding for him, or just decide he didn't want to shell out that much cash and sell the tickets I had.
In any scenario the thought was that Bruce was either going to go to the Super Bowl, or just sell the tickets to make some extra money. At no point in this equation did I ever fathom that it would be me actually travelling to the Big Apple and using these tickets. That never really entered my brain.
Fast forward to this morning, and I get a call from my brother and mother, at the same time. This struck me as a little weird, but whatever...I love my family. I'm happy to talk to them. The first thing my brother says to me is, "We've figured out where you need to send the tickets."
I think this is wonderful, because now I can mail them off to where ever they need to be sent and wait for my 10% of the profits and more importantly the reimbursement of the fees I paid to buy the tickets in the first place.
"Get a pen so you can write it down." Bruce tells me.
I get up and go to the kitchen to grab a pen, because this is what I was told to do, and I'm nothing if not compliant when it comes to making a percentage on hugely expensive tickets.
"The person's name who you need to give the tickets to is...Craig Dodge."
"Wait, What?"
"You're going to the Super Bowl!"
So at this point, I'm giddy, confused, excited, and mostly just in disbelief. I believe the next sentence I uttered was a profoundly thankful and insightful, "SHUT UP!"
My mother then told me that from the moment she found out that we had won the season ticket lottery (Something that roughly only 1 in 25 Broncos season ticket holders were lucky enough to do, per the guy at the Broncos' box office) she had wanted Bruce and I both to go, and she decided to use her bonus from this year to make sure that it happened. She was taking care of the tickets, airlines, and hotel for us so that we could go to the game.
She then told me that I could take my Broncos obsessed son or my wife on the trip to New York, but that we had to figure it out pronto, as the airline tickets were increasing in price practically every hour. I called my wife, who thought the idea of going to New York sounded awesome...however, she doesn't really care much at all about football, and she knew that it would make our son's decade to get to go. After five minutes of deliberation, she decided to let him go.
So, it's now official. On Friday afternoon, my son and I will board a plane and fly to New York City where we will meet up with my brother and his wife. We will spend a Saturday site seeing New York, and then head to Jersey on Sunday to see the Super Bowl in person. I AM GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!
It's still kind of hard to believe. On an excitement scale of 1 to 10, I'm a 47. And once again, roughly a billion Thank Yous go out to my mother. This was a truly EXCELLENT gift, and I am forever grateful.
