Friday night lights

picture stolen from facebook

When I told my sisters we were going to the football game on Friday night, they both had the same mystified response, "Why?"

"Because I want to," I said.  It was the Big Game.  There are two schools in our district and they were playing each other...at the football stadium they share.  Whoever wins gets to be the home team the following year.  GPHS got to be home but there were just as many Snohomish fans in the crowd.  It was hard to find a seat.

Our school colors are blue and white and Snohomish is red so it was a sea of America.  When the ROTC presented the colors, so close to September 11, and the band played the Star Spangled banner and I was surrounded by happy, healthy and safe American teenagers I maybe got a little teary.

I love this place.

Adam and I left minutes after he got home from work and got to the game at least 20 minutes early but we still had to sit in the student section because there were no grownup seats left.

Which was kind of the pits.

Nothing against those kids...well, something against those kids.  One boy, on my right, kept yelling at the Snohomish crowd, which was on my left.  The problem was, he'd turn to face them and ended up spraying me with his excited saliva in the process.  Finally Adam, who is always my knight in shining armor, leaned over me and told the boy he was not being very sportsmanlike and he was spitting in my face and he needed to face forward and cheer for his own team.

Much better.

I wore my Glacier Peak Grizzlies t-shirt.  Braeden said I looked like a Mama Grizzly. Sometimes I am a Mama Grizzly.  Especially if someone mistreats one of my cubs.  Then I end up feeling embarrassed about my crazy reaction.

(It's hard to be a Mama Grizzly.)

I do have the shirt though.

I think I look like Marianne in this picture.  A sort of blurry Marianne.

Happily (for everyone) Mark found Gavin almost immediately so Mark was happy and I didn't have to buy his happiness at the concession stand.

Mark and Gavin drifted in and out of the game, spending a lot of time behind the stadium with hundreds of other kids about their same age.  It was a tween convention back there.

As for Braeden and Emma, they went to the game earlier than us and sat with their own people.  Luckily I had an easy time spotting my tall curly headed boy so I knew he was alive and well.  Emma was harder to spot.  She had the phone though so I could text her helpful hints as to how to reconnect with Braeden after the game was over.

And speaking of the game, Glacier Peak won!

It really wasn't so much about the game though.  Adam heard an interview on the radio with the two opposing coaches before the game.  At the end of the interview, the interviewer asked the two coaches who was going to win the game.  The Snohomish coach said, "Snohomish!"

The Glacier Peak coach said, "The community.  There's going to be great football."

The Snohomish coach said, "Yeah, that's what I meant.  The community will win."

They were right.  The community won.  It was a fun evening, festive and happy.  We celebrated America and good old-fashioned competition and the talents of some of children in the community--the football players, the cheerleaders, the marching band.

And also, the kid stopped yelling/spitting in my face.

That was a win for the community.



At the game we saw a few couples that are longtime friends of Adam's parents.  It made me wish Adam's dad was still here.  He left us 4 years ago today.  We miss him and think about him often.  When I think about him I'm a jumble of sadness and hope and gratitude.  We will see him again.  I know that and that makes all the difference.