Travis Kelce Turned 36 and the Chiefs Gave Him a Win. I Got Socks
Kansas City beat the Saints 26-13 on Kelce's birthday to go 5-0. The internet searched it like a national holiday, which, in Kansas City, it may be.
By the Heckle Desk · · 1 min read
Travis Kelce turned 36 on Sunday, October 5. That same afternoon, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the New Orleans Saints 26-13 at Arrowhead Stadium and moved to 5-0 on the season. Taylor Swift was there, celebrating with both families, which is the kind of birthday party most of us only see in movies about rich people with problems.
Naturally, America went to Google about it. Travis Kelce's birthday and the Chiefs' win shot up Google's trending searches this week, right up there with fantasy football advice. That tells you something about the national character. We are a people who will look up a stranger's birthday before we look up our own mother's.
Now, I've had birthdays. Most of them went like this: somebody brought a cake from the gas station, my uncle forgot my age out loud, and I got socks. Nobody ever won a football game for me. One year a man let me merge on the highway, and I thought about it for a week.
Kelce, meanwhile, gets a 26-13 win, an undefeated record and a celebrity crowd. At 36 he's an elder statesman by football standards, which is a sport where they consider you old at the age most of us are still figuring out our insurance. He spent his birthday doing his job in front of a stadium full of people and winning. That's not a birthday. That's a performance review.
There's a lesson here for the rest of us, and it's this: if you want people to remember your birthday, become very good at something and have it happen on television. Otherwise, enjoy the socks. They're practical, and they're from someone who loves you, or at least someone who was at the gas station.