Go Team

This year, for the first time in my entire life, I will not be going home for Thanksgiving. As a teenager I always fantasized that one day I would move to the Big City and have a little urban Thanksgiving with all of my hip friends, and it would be like, well, Friends. My parents took it quite well, but they were nonetheless thrilled when I announced that I would visit for a weekend a bit earlier in the fall.

My visit also happened to coincide with one of Michigan State University's home games, so that Saturday morning my father and I bundled up in green caps and ponchos and headed to the stadium. Now, I haven't been to a college football game in over five years, and for someone who spent her formative years in a Big Ten town, then attended another Big Ten University, that's a lifetime. As soon as I heard the band, it all came rushing back: tailgating, the little roly-poly male cheerleader who could never quite time his backflips right, the time the marching band played "My Heart Will Go On" while marching in the shape of a ship and the flute section *broke off and sank*-- there is no better Saturday than that.

I once tried to relate the thrill to my boyfriend, but he claims that he will forever associate football with getting his ass kicked in elementary school. Apparently he never smuggled a screwdriver into the stadium--what a lousy sport.