You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy?™
College Saturdays.
I’m sitting in the backyard. I have the windows open and I’m listening to the Auburn vs Clemson game.
The announcers are hyped. The crowd is roaring. The electricity that is college football is in the air.
Listening to a game is nothing like being at the game.
The difference is expansive. It’s marching band versus one man band. It’s Elle McPherson versus Rosie O’Donnell. It’s the difference between having sex and talking about having sex. There is really no comparison.
For some reason, on this college football Saturday, I am thinking back to my early days on the job. I was working in Greenville, North Carolina, home of the East Carolina Pirates.
My memories take me back to a Saturday like this one. The sky is brilliant blue with a wisp of puffy clouds floating by. The air is blazing hot and the periodic shadow created by a cloud overhead is a welcome relief.
The parking lot is grass that surrounds the stadium. We are parked six hours before game time and the tail gate is on and so is the hangover to be.
ECU is known as a party school. Football games are an event in the South. At ECU, adult beverages are known to flow often and easily.
As vehicles pull in, the field is transformed into a parking lot of crazy. Tents go up, grills are set out, flags are hooked onto bumpers, music begins blaring. What was a pastoral setting has become a chaotic mess that erupts from the ground like so many drunken ant hills.
Within minutes, the smell of brats and wings permeates the air. Suddenly there are Frisbees and footballs filling the lot. There is Lynyrd Skynrd and the occasional whiff of reefer floating on a Saturday afternoon breeze.
Chronologically, we are older than the college kids all around us, but emotionally, I think we are all using the same frat boy brain.
This tailgate began like others, slowly, friendly. After a few hours, someone produces a beer bong. After a few more hours beer isn’t enough and tequila is added to this lunatic equation.
The next thing you know the Earth is spinning and purple and gold pom poms are flying around in a quagmire of tilted thoughts and jilted memories.
From the periphery of who knows, we are celebrating with some frat boys from the Kappa Sig house. Maybe they were parked next to us, maybe a football toss ended up in our grill. It’s hard to know what brought our worlds together.
All I remember is young men shot gunning beers and wiping mustard off their chests. The afternoon is all ready a sweaty mess and kickoff isn’t for another two hours.
Suddenly frat boys are squaring off in the middle of the grass like a civil war reenactment.
Southern Frat boys take their Southern Frat rituals seriously. Apparently someone said something to someone about something.
LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE.
Next thing I know hay makers are flying. Guys are in the mud going at it. There’s a cloud of dust and ten guys are squaring off. The guys we are parked next to are getting their asses jumped by some rival Greeks.
I am not sure how or why, but suddenly I’m in the middle of this melee, hitting and being hit. I don’t remember getting hurt and I don’t remember hurting anyone. Somehow the thing stops as suddenly as it starts. There is yelling and finger pointing.
Game Time.
On the way into the stadium we talk about the chaos, de-constructing the event as if it is the Kennedy Assassination minus the Zapruder film.
As we take our seats in Ficklen Stadium, the events of the pre-game brawl are erased by the band, the excitement and the cheerleaders flying through the air. This is the era of Jeff Blake and the Pirates have a pretty good team.
The game ends. We trudge through a field of trash. We get in our cars and go home.
Suddenly the alarm is going off and it’s Monday. The rat race is once again banging on my door.
Then the phone at the office rings. It’s Bill the boss.
1-800-CALL-BILL, we use to joke. Today was no joke.
I don’t remember his exact words but it went something like this:
Cordan were you fighting at an ECU football game this weekend?
Fighting?
Don’t bother answering that. I have video of you fighting.
Video?
Video. I need you down here now. We need to talk.
It was a long drive to the main office. I think I tried to argue that weekends are my business and I was dragged into the scrum. I probably floated a number of tired and worthless excuses by him, all of which the boss shot down.
At work – at play; I guess I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge.
Yep, it was a College Saturday just like this one. Only today I am older and wiser. Instead of a tequila beer bong, I am nursing an ice tea.
The sound of the game is soothing and there is not so much as a fist or a beer bong in my face.
And that’s crazy.