Monday, October 13, 2008

Home Field Advantage?

So, I went to the Mizzou game this weekend. Took my son. Usually sit on the alumni side. Only tickets I could get for this one were in the student section. My son got to choose the tail-gating menu. His special day. We partied it up with peanut butter sandwiches, Pringles, and Sprite. No that’s not a typo. Peanut butter and Pringles.

Heard all seven of George Carlin’s deadly words copius quantities. Heard two or three others that should have made the list, but somehow didn’t. That was before the end of the first quarter. It got uglier from there.

The highway patrol was fairly active on that side of the field helping with crowd control. One young “lady” drew the attention of two officers nearby our seats. As she was stating her case, her boyfriend apparently took issue with the tone the trooper was using. He pointed his finger at the officer and accidentally made contact with his shoulder. Now, his finger wasn’t loaded, of course, but he was. Clearly. However, that didn’t much matter to the trooper. Kids, never, and I mean never, touch a highway patrolman while in the course of performing his duties. That was one of the only tackles made during the game in that stadium by anyone from Missouri.

Sold out defense, oops, I meant game. Sold out game. I’m talking butt cheek to butt cheek. My son and I were wedged in so tight that we didn’t have to sit or stand, just sort of moved with the collective crowd. There was a group of like six in front of us that left their seat no fewer than 23 times a quarter requiring 1,700 of us to move out of the way.

My stomach had a hard time reconciling the peanut butter and Pringles, the bile rising from the play of the Tigers, the stench of beer and vomit, and the abuse my sides took from the ding dongs next to me getting up and down every two minutes. Good times.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Sounds like quite the education for your son. Looking forward to seeing you this weekend.