It’s funny the things that trigger memories.

Yesterday afternoon, watching Andy Reid’s Kansas City Chiefs punch their ticket to the Super Bowl was one of those moments that took me back 20-plus years.

When it comes to watching team sports, I’m a homer. If I don’t have a horse in the race, I’m not watching.

With one exception, I’m a Philadelphia fan through and through. If the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers or Sixers aren’t in the playoffs, my interest drops to less than nil. So when my Eagles lost to Seattle a couple of weeks ago, the NFL was dead to me for this season.

Except for the Chiefs.

You see, once upon a long ago, Andy Reid was a rookie coach for those beloved Eagles of mine.

We weren’t enamored with his hiring. He had been a quarterbacks’ coach for the Green Bay Packers under the celebrated Mike Holmgren, but for those of us hoping for a way out of the late-90s wilderness the Birds were lost in, he wasn’t the experienced hand we were looking for.

Neither was drafting Syracuse QB Donovan McNabb — the home crowd wanted running back Ricky Williams and a busload of fans who made the trip to the draft made their displeasure known in the best Philadelphia tradition by booing the pick on the draft floor. 

Handing the keys to the offense to a no-name third string QB named Doug Pederson was the icing on the cake, and the Eagles floundered about that year. finally handing the ball to McNabb about two thirds of the way through the season.

Little did we know that Reid would last 14 years in Philadelphia, McNabb would be there many of those years, and the team would have unparalleled success. Perhaps not the “gold standard” the ownership claimed to be — that would suggest Super Bowl wins, and while the Eagles were several times the bridesmaid, they were never the bride — but losing, for the most part, was a long distant memory.

That all came to an end, as it often does in Philadelphia, when we ran “Big Red” out of town for something brighter and shinier in Chip Kelly, who preceded to dismantle the club in a couple of short years. 

Reid landed alright, as head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. Meanwhile, the Eagles saw the error of their ways and sent Chip packing, finally winning that elusive Lombardi trophy. The head coach? That same little-loved third string quarterback, Doug Pederson.

Watching that Chiefs game brought all that back — that first year, when I was a young an confident journalist living out his dream of working for a daily newspaper —  a whole life out in front of me full of twists and turns I could not possibly imagine. 

Time passes quickly, and 20 years in a flash. For many of them, Coach Reid was a constant. For tried-and-true Philadelphia fan, particularly we ex-pats, the follies of our sports teams are the ties that bind. Reid gave us a lot of great games, a lot of great memories, a lot of good times.

Andy Reid is one of the longest serving coaches in the NFL, perhaps Hall of Fame caliber, with the only black mark against him being the lack of a Super Bowl win. So, this year, I’ll have a horse in the big game — a reason to watch beyond the ads and snacks. 

I’ll be rooting for “Big Red.” It’s the least I can do.

Somewhere along the line, it became an annual tradition. Perhaps it is a remedy for the “Post-Christmas Blues,” maybe it is the result of cabin fever, or simply because we finally have the time on a weekend, but January always includes a trip to IKEA.
 
If you don’t have one near you, IKEA is a European company that specializes in ready-to-assemble furniture. Yet, calling IKEA simply a furniture company is like saying a Ferrari is simply a car. IKEA is an experience.
 
One of the primary draws is the food. Dreams have been built around the taste of the Swedish meatballs, and if you are lucky enough to be close to one, it’s a good meal at a great price. Plus, all of it can come home with you at the end of the day when you shop the market, along with such delicacies as roe paste and pickled herring.
 
Don’t worry, all the food isn’t foreign to the palate — there are plenty of goodies for all tastes.
 
Then, there is the store itself. To give you an idea of scale, the average store is 300,000 square feet. So, there are plenty of idea-inspiring rooms to walk through filled with furniture and home goods to fill your home. Even when you go in with a plan to buy nothing, you’ll come out having spent more than you expected.
 
It is more than a shopping trip, and because the nearest store are at least an hour and a half from our house, it has become an experience – as I say, a tradition.
 
In previous years, it was to look for furniture and accents for our home, but now, having been here for seven years and with our home on the market, I’m sure our real estate agent’s head might pop to see us drag in a new piece of furniture.
 
With a kid preparing to head to college, however, the trip took on new meaning. Where, in the past, we might have been looking for a bed or TV stand for her room, dragging her through the store when she reached the point where she had enough, this time we were spectators as a young adult shopped for her dorm room.
 
It was a striking reminder as to how quickly time passes. Some moments in life can seem to drag on forever, yet 10 years can pass in a blink of an eye. Watching that remarkable young woman about to start a new chapter in her life while remembering the young girl who amused herself creating slow-motion videos of me eating meatballs in the cafeteria is such moment.
 
Of course, it is a new chapter in our lives, as well. My life has pretty much been evenly split between the Philadelphia and Washington D.C. regions. That’s a lot of ground, a lot of life and a lot of memories for a sentimental fool.
 
The next chapter will mean new traditions, new friends and new places to explore. There’s plenty of excitement in that, of course, and just a little bit of trepidation. 
 
I’m not a huge Rush fan, but with the recent passing of band member Neil Peart, all of this reminded of a lyric an old friend once related: “Changes aren’t permanent, but change is.”

I’ve often thought if I hadn’t filled my brain with useless facts and song lyrics, I’d probably made a pretty decent brain surgeon.

As it is, my greatest contribution to the greater good is a head full of trivial knowledge.

Seriously, some are faster than a speeding bullet, some are millionaire playboys who solve crimes and some talk to fish, but my superpower is the factoid.

I started honing that skill as a kid with the original Trivial Pursuit game. None of those newfangled editions — they made it too easy — only the original, wrong answers and all. 

I poured over the Guinness Book of World Records, the Baseball Encyclopedia and that set of Funk & Wagnalls my mom diligently picked up week by week at the Acme. These were the dark times, kids, before the Wikipedias and the Internet. You had to crack the spine on a book, releasing that delicious “published” smell, just to gain a little knowledge.

Working for newspapers only helped to build that repertoire. Briefly becoming an expert on myriad topics, reading constantly, you can’t help but to have pick up a million bits of information over a nearly 30-year career. Hours whiled away playing electronic trivia in bars helped a little, too.

I can rattle off answers left and right on Jeopardy! like Holzhauer. In fact, I’ve taken the test multiple times.  I’m a Jeopardy! fiend (Now, I have a friend who would interject here that she has beaten me in the Jeopardy! video game on multiple occasions, but full disclosure: she cheats.)

I’m convinced the reason they won’t have me on the show is they don’t want me to embarrass Alex Trebek. It can’t be that I haven’t performed well enough on the test, because, when it comes to trivia, I’ve got the skillz. With a “Z.” When the “Trivia Crack” app became popular, many wouldn’t play me because I was just that darn good. How’s that for G.O.A.T.? 

Hopefully, you realize all this boasting is tongue in cheek, but I do like the trivia. Yet, ironically, I never got around to doing a trivia night until last week. Newspaper hours aren’t always conducive to evening entertainment. Newly freed on Monday nights — trivia night — my significant and I joined up with a friend’s team at a local pub.

If you have never done a trivia night, it’s pretty simple. A DJ reads questions, you/your team writes down answers. Things get progressively harder each round and highest score wins in the end.

I found I brought several pluses to the table. A good 15 years older than most of the team, my pointless knowledge of the 70s and 80s were a huge benefit. Cagney and Lacey? Nailed it. My being a car guy also worked in my favor. Chevy Cobalt? Nailed it.

As a former sportswriter, everyone was excited to know they had someone on the team who knew “sportsball.” Fittingly, I blew all the sports questions that evening.

But, by far, the biggest asset I brought to the table was my significant. Doesn’t it figure? Here you are, trying to show off your mad trivia skillz, and again I say, with a “Z,” and who is getting all the answers?

Yep.

Which in the end only proves I may be smarter I give myself credit for. I came with the smartest girl in the room.