QB Tom Brady flips the ball to the ground after one of the five sacks he endured in Super Bowl XLII.

>

THE Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

Never have I had a more painful visit to the dentist.

It began with the receptionist.

“I never watch the Patriots,” she said.

“Really?” I respond distractedly, while trying to remember whether I’ve flossed since Billy Sullivan sold the team. “Why’s that?”

“Whenever I watch them, they lose.”

“Uh-oh,” I say to myself. “I know where this is going.”

“I hadn’t watched them all season,” she said, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “When they started winning so many games, I wanted to, but the doctor said I shouldn’t — that it might be bad luck. So I didn’t. Not even when they made the playoffs.”

This was four days after Super Sunday. After filing my follow-up column about the game that Monday morning from Phoenix, I’d made a concerted effort not to write about, not to talk about, not even to think about what happened in Super Bowl XLII.

Now, it was as if this sweet, smiling, unfailingly pleasant receptionist had taken a drill into her hand and hit an exposed nerve.

“But…,” she continued.

Don’t say it. Please.

“I had to watch the Super Bowl,” she said. “I just had to. And then the Patriots lost. Now I feel so badly. I was afraid to tell the doctor. What do you think about that?”

“I think,” I said to myself, “you should be fired.”

Instead, hurting on the inside but smiling on the outside, I replied: “Don’t worry; it wasn’t your fault the Patriots lost. You’re not to blame because they scored only fourteen points and couldn’t stop the Giants from driving eighty-three yards in the final two-and-a-half minutes to the winning touchdown.”

At which point, my ever-patient hygienist called for me.

Never have I been so happy to climb into the dentist’s chair.

Except, instead of “open wide,” her first words were: “Can you believe that game? Can you believe the Patriots lost?”

What I cannot believe is that the Patriots’ disappointing, disheartening, dismaying defeat at the hands of the New York Giants is all anyone wants to talk about, when all I want to do is pretend it never happened.

Truth be told, I seldom care which team wins a game I’m covering. I just want to see a good game, in which no one gets hurt. It’s easier when the home team wins, because the coaches and players are in a better mood, but it doesn’t really matter.

Super Bowl XLII mattered to me, just as the 2004 World Series mattered. Hey, contrary to popular belief, sportswriters are human beings, too! Born and raised in Rhode Island, and having spent most of my adult life here, I was beginning to wonder whether I’d ever see the Red Sox win a World Series. So I was thrilled to see them sweep the Cardinals in ’04.

It was nice to see them win again in ’07, but if the remarkable Rockies had won, that would have been a great story.

If the Patriots had gone into Super Bowl XLII with, say, a 17-1 record, then a loss to the Giants — who were coming into the game off impressive road victories at Dallas and Green Bay — wouldn’t have been a big deal.

But all of New England, all of NFL Nation, was staring perfection right in the eye. 19-0. A perfect season. The odds against any team accomplishing such a feat in this era are astronomical.

I wanted to be able to say I had covered a team that had gone undefeated. I wanted the Patriots to win. And when they didn’t, I was disappointed.

I wasn’t devastated, although I can understand how some devoted fans might feel that way. But once my professional duties were completed, I didn’t want to think about the game or the Patriots, or even football, for a while.

I was almost looking forward to my visit to the dentist as a welcome distraction.

Then the good doctor walked in.

Usually we talk about his two boys, who play hockey and lacrosse. We reminisce about his days as a high school wrestler. We discuss our golf games.

Not this time.

“What did you think of the Super Bowl?” he inquired, not knowing I’d rather have a root canal than talk about how the Pats had blown the opportunity of a lifetime.

At that point, getting me to comment further on how many ways the Patriots had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory was, in dental parlance, like pulling teeth.

I don’t have to go back for six months. By then, hopefully, everyone will be talking about the Red Sox. By then, perhaps, the pain of the Patriots’ loss finally will have subsided.