A mid-week exchange at Trader Joe’s in Upland:

Male clerk, making banter: You gonna watch the Super Bowl?

Me: No.

Clerk: Why not? Everybody watches the Super Bowl.

Me: That’s why I don’t watch it.

This was, I think, Super Bowl 42, if my Roman numeral skills haven’t left me, and at this point I have a streak going, not having seen any of them. Not to be a snob about it; I understand the value and comfort and fun of American communal experiences, and I wouldn’t say the Academy Awards, which I sometimes tune in for, are any less ridiculous.

That said, I resist the Super Bowl hype and generally enjoy an afternoon in which the streets and shops are semi-depopulated. Because of the weather, a trip to Pasadena or somesuch was less appealing this year. I considered eating lunch at Ontario’s Super Bowl Thai just for the joke of it; for that matter, I could have ordered joke, which is the name of a porridge, but as ironies go, that’s awfully reductive.

Instead, I had a late lunch out in Pomona in a mostly empty restaurant and bought groceries in Claremont with only one person ahead of me in line. Noticed that 21 Choices frozen yogurt, which usually has a line out the door, appeared empty, but I wasn’t in the mood for something cold. Went to a coffeehouse and read a novel in relative peace.

If you didn’t watch the Super Bowl, what did you do Sunday?