I changed the calendar! The Bee Gees once sang “I started a joke.” Well I believe I started a joke… that became a meme! I’ll explain.
As most of you probably know, today is Super Bowl Sunday. Whether or not you’re a football fan, you undoubtedly know it’s the Big Game, this year between Kansas City and Philadelphia. Even if you’re not a fan, there’s a good chance you might be tuning in to see if Taylor Swift shows up or see the famous commercials, which are often made especially for the game. It’s been like that for years now.
But back about a decade, I noticed that if you wrote it together, all as one word – superbowl – if you split it one letter differently, you got something altogether different. I was quite pleased with myself and went to Facebook and probably Twitter and proclaimed
Happy Superb Owl Day!
I’d never seen anyone call it that or write it that way to celebrate nocturnal birds of prey. I felt quite clever, I’m sure, and found a good picture of a nice owl (like the one above which unfortunately I did not take) to put in the post. I can’t remember now, but I think a handful of people “liked” the comment and a few might have put a smiley emoji or something in reply. I said it to a couple of people in person and got maybe a “tee hee” or very faint smile as a reply to my astounding wit. I believe I followed up the next year on the football day and repeated the gag, somehow or other on the Social media… then even I got tired of making the same joke over and over. Fast forward to last year, and I see “superb owl” trending on things like Yahoo the day of the ballgame!
This year, the phrase is everywhere. Denver Zoo has officially declared it Superb Owl day there. NPR did a feature on owls labeled as Superb Owl. USA Today has an online story titled “It’s almost Superb Owl 2025, so please enjoy these cool bird pics.” Google it and tons of results come up. The birds are getting more attention than ever before.
Owls are superb; perhaps more so than football!
So if you’re not into football, Taylor Swift or President Trump (who’s rumored to be at the ballgame) you might want to step outside at dusk and listen, watch for things taking flight. And enjoy Superb Owl day. Me, I’ll probably be pondering how I have written books, articles, blogs and may end up changing the culture… with a little off the cuff joke.
I suppose the moral of it is to never under-estimate the power of your words. Or that, man, owls are cool, aren’t they?
Everydave Life 