Fact, fiction collide on trip to Philadelphia

Now, I've never been to Oakland for a Raiders football game, but I'm well aware of the reputation the fans there have achieved. So, with my keister parked in Row 3 of the end zone at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, I think to myself: If the people who produce Ultimate Fighting Championships ever decide to expand their sublime art form to full-out gang war, they should arrange a match between Raiders fans and Eagles fans.

There are so many security people around the end zone seats that I feel like a member of a prison work detail. In the course of the game, I witness four fan ejections, one including handcuffs. If former-Eagle-turned-Cowboy Terrell Owens jumped up in these stands, I swear these people actually might eat him in a swarm that would make piranha proud.

Probably a mistake to wear my leather Green Bay Packers jacket. One guy gives me a steely, baleful stare and says icily, "You lost?" I smile warmly and chuckle that "boys will be boys, aren't we all having fun being sports-guys" manly chuckle ... but he doesn't smile back.

Good thing for me I watch a lot of Discovery Channel. I quickly break eye contact like an obedient, deferent primate, because Jane Goodall told me that holding eye contact with any of the Great Apes can provoke a charge.

I'm not an Eagles fan. But I am a huge fan of my middle son.

How and why Aaron, 14, became a Philadelphia Eagles fan is as simple as birth-order and ego-development. His older brother and I are rabid Packers fans. Like any self-respecting second-born, he tired of his hand-me-down Cheesehead status, and yearned for his own fan niche. And, in his words, he thought the Eagles uniforms "looked cool."

His is a personality so fluid, warm and affable. He might be the most generous human being I've ever known. Tom Sawyer's boyish, curious, creative energy without the cheekiness and guile. If I invite him to accompany me pretty much anywhere, his chief concern is "Will there be snacks?" Even as his Eagles are getting trashed by the Dallas Cowboys, he regrets not including his older brother:

"Pop, if you become a famous writer and can afford it, let's come back next year and bring Jonathan."

I'm saying he belongs with a group of Philadelphia Eagles fans the way Mike Tyson belongs on a Mormon mission. Sing with me: "One of these things is not like the other ..."

Now it's Monday. Time for more sightseeing. We saw the Liberty Bell yesterday morning, and made good on our investigation to see whether this Philly cheese steak thing is a legitimate phenomenon or just a myth. I ate two.

So, today we can take the tour of Independence Hall, and hear lectures about the men who wrote and signed perhaps the most daring and provocative political manifesto ever: the Declaration of Independence. We can bask in the legacy of Colonial heroes who launched history's single greatest experiment in democracy. Overwhelming, really. Or we can ride the bus across town to the Philadelphia Museum of the Arts and run up the colossal concrete stairs used by Rocky Balboa as he trained for his first fight against Apollo Creed.

I am now the proud owner of a cell-phone video of Aaron running up the Rocky steps. That's me mimicking the horns of the movie soundtrack. Aaron has a cell-phone video of me shadow-boxing the huge bronze of Rocky, standing on a concrete pedestal in front of the museum. Rocky once ducked hooks and jabs. Now his only real opponent is pigeons.

The funny thing is, I could have sworn the statue was at the entrance to The Spectrum, where Rocky fought Apollo. And then I just can't stop laughing at myself. Because I'm standing on these steps the way I've stood at the Alamo in San Antonio, the way I've stood on Breed's Hill in Boston, the way I've stood on the corner of Commerce and Elm Street in Dallas -- imagining, thinking, wondering what it would have been like to be there.

Be where, exactly, Steven?

Hollywood has succeeded in moving the life of Rocky Balboa from fiction to storytelling to saga and on into mythic proportions. Somewhere inside of me Rocky's incredible life is real. If he and Apollo and Mickey and Adrienne didn't exist, they should have.

Had a fabulous time with my boy, but I was ever-so-slightly embarrassed. Like, maybe I need a meds check.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for the Asking Human Matters column or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@review journal.com.