Sports

In the winter of 1991, my mom petitioned my eldest brother and he stayed with us for a couple of weeks.  He was seventeen, and the idea was that he should come to America while he was a minor.  We didn't know much about immigration law, but we somebody suggested that we should establish that he has come to the States and stayed with us before turning eighteen.  Something like that.  We turned out to be wrong because things became difficult once he became an adult.

Somehow somebody decided that it was more important for him to continue college in the Philippines.  He came to us during Christmas break in December.  We spent a lot of that time going to different friends and relatives.  It was kind of fun actually.  It seemed like we were at a different Christmas party every few days.  It was my first Christmas in America, and I thought it would be like that every year.  It wasn't.

Of course, we had to show my brother the sights in New York City.  We went to Times Square.  I'm not sure if this is a memory or imagined or if it was when my brother was there, but I remember us parking our car on Broadway in the middle of all that traffic and crowd and having to pee and going on the side of the car with the door covering the view.  Again, I'm not sure if that's a real memory though.

I went up for my first and only time to the top of the World Trade Center.  It was pretty cool.  I remember going up in a very huge elevator, like freight size.  I don't remember exactly if we went to the Statue of Liberty, but I'm inclined to think we did go there, as well as Ellis Island.

At home one night, NBA on NBC was on.  I remember it was the Bulls vs. Trailblazers.  It never occurred to me to watch sports in those days.  One Sunday I was channel surfing and I saw the New York Giants game on CBS, and I was like, meh.  It was the same for baseball, and car racing and golf and other stuff.  I definitely do not recall ever seeing a hockey game or even a commercial for it on local TV in those days.

I think it was a Saturday night, and I was probably expecting to see "Perfect Strangers" or some other sitcom on ABC or something.  But my brother wanted to watch Michael Jordan.  I don't think he had ever seen a live game on broadcast TV before.  So he was pretty excited about it.  I had grown accustomed to my shows, but I actually liked and admired my eldest brother a lot, and I was happy to let him watch.  I don't think I even thought about recording my shows.  I was just glad to share the experience with him.

I can't remember if they were the home or away team, but I believe the Bulls may have been playing in Portland.  I would feel confident in thinking that Chicago probably won that game.  I can't remember what else my brother and I watched on TV during his brief stay with us.  After he left, I continued to watch basketball whenever the Bulls were on, which was rare because we didn't have cable.

In the springtime though, with the NBA playoffs happening, I did get to see the Bulls a lot.  It was fun watching the team and getting invested into it.  I did not care for the Knicks or the Nets, nor did I know much about any of the other teams.  I wasn't even aware of the existence of the Phoenix Suns.  I thought the name was weird.  How many suns are there?  Isn't there only one sun? 

In the mornings at school, my classmates and I would talk about the game from the previous night.  I drew the Bulls logo on my notebooks a lot.  I got very good at it.  It was great for me because it was something I could talk about with my classmates.  And the Bulls did eventually win the championship.  I'm not sure what we talked about after that.