There are three things everyone knows about our pigskin princess Ida Eisenstein: don’t cut in front of her in line at the Silver Star meat market; don’t ever criticize ex-Seattle Seahawk Brian Bosworth in her presence; and never, ever, speak to her during Super Bowl week.
It’s not that Eisenstein is too busy to talk — quite the contrary. She takes the entire work week off and drives up to her summer compound in the Adirondacks, where she hunts for fat winter rabbit and forages for root vegetables to make a hearty soup.
On the night before the Super Bowl, Eisenstein will have the usual guests assembled: Oslo’s deputy minister of fisheries; 11 former members of the Peruvian National Guard; and a Dutch organist known only as “Blond Bear.”
If past history is any indicator, guests will laugh and brawl into the wee hours, but Eisenstein will be silent as a golem as she sits stone-faced at the head of the otherwise festive table, chewing each bite exactly 33 times before swallowing.
An hour before kickoff, she’ll retire to seclusion to her den, where she’ll listen to the game on an old Atwater-Kent cathedral-style radio, wildly jotting down numbers inside a leather-bound notebook.
When the final whistle blows, Eisenstein will finally speak, summoning, as she always does, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, her inspiration for the offseason: “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
Ida’s Kryptonite Lock of the Week:
Giants (+3) over Patriots:
“I just think that they can do it, they can taste it, they want it so bad they’ll do anything they can to get it — although the other team probably feels the same way.”
136-124-7, 13-8 on Kryptonite Lock of the Week.
