B.t.F.F.

I am preparing to watch the Super Bowl with a friend in a small room with several television screens. I think it may be a shared "TV room" in some kind of student housing. We have one large screen which is tuned to a different channel, and small odd-shaped screens on either side and above it. The game is about to start, and the announcers say that as a special feature, they're going to play the famous "Balancing the family football" video clip right before the game.

I search for the remote control to change the channel on the main screen to the game channel. The first three remotes I find are all "simplified" ones lacking the necessary controls for doing that. I find the non-simplified remote and use it with no trouble. The first channel I try is in French, but it's easy to find the English one. However, by this time they've already cut to a commercial.

As the commercial break ends, the room I'm in fills up with children who take all the good seats; I'm relegated to a back corner and can't easily see the screen over the kids in front of me. They complain, because the main screen is now showing what seems to be part of a soap opera in untranslated Japanese, and they want to watch the Super Bowl. I am surprised too, but I explain that I'm sure this is the Super Bowl's channel, and apparently what we're seeing is the famous "Balancing the family football" video clip that the announcers said was relevant and worth watching, and they certainly wouldn't pre-empt the game for it. The game will start, on this channel, very soon.

In the clip, we see a family sitting down to eat a meal at a picnic table. A boy comes up to join them; he is bruised and out of breath. Another boy shows up, even more heavily bruised, with both eyes blackened. The adults ask him what he was doing. By this point they've switched to speaking English. He says, "Balancing the family football."

An elderly woman, possibly a grandmother or great-aunt, asks him to explain what that means, and he says "No." This is very shocking. How dare he say that to her?