NOTE: this post was created in November… sorry for the delay. :-)
I have daughters. Daughters don’t (usually) play football. Therefore, the excitement about Friday nights has somewhat passed me by since I graduated from high school myself in… um… a couple of decades ago.
But one of my daughters is in her high school marching band, so I’m now required to attend at least one football game – or large portions thereof – during the season to see her march. I went one night and sat through part of the second quarter, watched half-time and left. But now the team is in the play-offs for state championship, and tonight was their first playoff game against Cabot, and D was eager for me to see her with her hat, so I went again.
It’s interesting, the sights and sounds of the high school football game. Parents who root for their own son on the field, and those who know all the players’ names and yell for all of them. The grandmas who yell – no, scream “GO Defense!!” and “Come on now, HOLD ‘EM!!” as loud as any of the 16 year-olds. Girls in tight pants and Uggs boots (ugg is right, they’re so damn ugly). Mothers in tight pants and Uggs boots… don’t get me started on how wrong that looks…
It was great to watch the band in the stands performing their “fun numbers”, and the fight song after every touchdown (of which there were many). They have fantastic-looking uniforms, with pleated capes and the classic hats with feather plumes on the front. Their colors are navy and black… just really sharp.
I sat down front, and it was a great vantage point to hear the conversation between the coaches and players. I watched those boys, remembering what gods the football players were in high school in my day… Of course they are going to look younger now than they did when I was in high school… but the interesting thing is the way I remember being a teenager at my high school games, but have a different perspective on it all even as I still feel like I’m having a kid flashback… sounds weird I guess.
The older I get, the more confident I become that no one really ever feels much older than 17. We grow up physically, we mature (most of us) and learn a bunch of lessons about life. But when a song comes on the radio, or a memory of a particular event or moment pops up – it’s right back to high school. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
