Geaux Tigers!!

My life has been inundated the past couple of weeks by football. Of course I live with a woman whose eyes light up when the Monday Night Football song comes on. At eight o’clock she starts leaning closer to the television, waiting, then here comes Hank Jr. and when it is all said and done there is an audible sigh. Can you feel my muscles tensing? Unlike me with a good Lifetime movie, C wants me to share in this moment with her. I usually try to have a good book handy.

This past weekend however, LSU was playing and I did not have to fake my interest as this is my father’s team. I don’t care so much about them winning but it makes me feel strangely closer to my father to cheer his team on. The game was closer than anyone thought (a statement shamelessly stolen from overheard conversations between people who actually know what they are talking about). With me uncharacteristically involved in the game, our conversation went something like this:

Me: “I’ve been to that stadium”

C: “Uh huh, I know.”

C (at top of her voice): “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”

Me (a few minutes later): “Did you see Mike the Tiger just now?”

C: “No, did they show him?”

Me: “Yes. I hear he has a new habitat”

C (again at top of her voice): “COME ON!!”

Me: “Are you going to help me with the Christmas lights?”

C: “I thought you wanted to watch this game?”

No, clearly I had no interest in the game. What I preferred was to watch my own childhood in my mind’s eye. I wanted to tell her again that the one time my father took me to Tigers Stadium it was snowing in Baton Rouge and that I didn’t have a heavy winter coat so I wore my Smoky the Bear Halloween costume. That we watched the teams warm up on the field and before kick off my father lied and said we had won. Now that was my kind of football game.