Ten years.

Ten years ago I watched the Super Bowl in a suburb of Boston, surrounded by a houseful of Patriots fans.  Ten years ago, Tom Brady was an unknown back-up quarterback who surprised everyone and won his first fancy ring.  A lot has changed in ten years.

In 2002, we actually had to watch the game, in real-time.  We were forced to sit through the commercials, every single, tacky one of them.   Ten years ago, the only way we could see a replay of the action was if the network replayed it.  The only game analysis we received was from the announcers, or from our friends sitting next to us.

In Super Bowl 37, nobody thought the Patriots could win.  A decade ago, unless you were a Patriots fan, you probably hadn’t even heard of Tom Brady.   I’m willing to bet not even Giselle Bundchen had yet heard of her hunk husband-to-be.

Ten years ago, I was just getting to know mine.

Yes, my husband and I met at a Super Bowl party ten years ago.  Romantic, isn’t it?

Now, we are eight years married with two children.  And we live very, very far away from Boston.

It probably goes without saying that the only Patriots fans we saw or talked to yesterday were the same four with whom we watched the game.  And their last names all started with “S.”

Quite unlike that fateful evening a decade ago.

Last night, between feeding our children (and ourselves) Mexican take-out for dinner, walking the dog, answering questions about the game (from our curious children), fast-forwarding risqué commercials (for our curious children), and scratching backs (of our itchy children), we barely had time to talk to each other, much less snuggle or take in the fact that we were celebrating our tenth anniversary of meeting.

Even after the kids were in bed, instead of gazing into each others’ eyes and hanging onto each others’ every word, Joe and I stared into our smartphones, texting our families, and checking our twitter feeds for game reactions from our friends.

Super Bowl 46 was much less romantic for the Patriots, too.  After a decade of dominance, three Super Bowl titles and their fifth Super Bowl in ten years, the Patriots were favored to win.

And, tragically, disappointingly, they did not.

It seems like this year’s Super Bowl couldn’t have been any more different than the one I will always remember so fondly.

The world went from watching the game on fuzzy, heavy, boxy TVs, to watching it on HD flat-screens with digital video recorders.  We went from flip phones to iphones.  From MySpace (or MyFace/SpaceBook as Bill Belicheck would call it) to Twitter.

Joe and I went from single and carefree in Massachusetts to married with children and a dog in Missouri.

And the Patriots went from upset to choke, World Champions to runners-up.

In fact, there is only one thing I can think of that hasn’t changed since February 3, 2002  …

My admiration and affection for the handsome, brown-haired boy sitting across the room from me.