live on the 20 yard line...

I've been to a handful of Auburn home games during my tenure in the South thanks to my cousin Jason and his very giving friends who always threw a ticket my way (as long as it wasn't Auburn v. Georgia, or the Iron bowl). I screamed, chanted, decked in Orange and Blue and shook my shaker. (That's a pom-pom on a stick for the Northeners). I had so much fun blending in with the students, pretending for a second I was still back in school and a 65 hour + workweek wasn't ready to meet me come Monday.

But yesterday, yesterday took the cake. On the north side of the Rutgers stadium I sat with a large group of friends including 2 of my best college pals. We cheered, screamed, decked in Scarlet Red and black, ate hot dogs (see previous Post: countdown to Turkey) and had that general warm feeling of respect for our school. It all came together on the 20 yard line. So much so that I had to text one the Auburn boys to let him know I finally understand.




I know now why you have to buy 4 area newspapers just to see who said what about your team, and how sports center becomes a ritual, as does the BCS rankings. Funny, coming from a female's mouth you think, or even more so, a Northerner? These times are a changin', and I am amazed of how many college women and alumni can rattle off Brian Lenoard's stats- and I'm not talking about eye color or height.

The final score was 38-7, we were all hoping for a shutout but Rutgers if any team knows what's it's like to put just one number on board when you are on the losing side of the game. Maybe I'm too sensitive, but Syracuse, take that 7 points with pride, you just scored on one of the top defensive teams in the nation.



After the game we went back to Laur's brother's house who's still a student. We drank cheap light beers, ordered pizza and argued who's takeout was the best. (Sadly, king's pizza is no longer the shrine to mozzarella and sauce it use to be). I felt like we were all back in school and New York was a place of my internship, not my life. It was a strange but good feeling.

At a favored bar around the corner from my old college house, I met up most of the old roomies. How far we've all come, progressing in different areas of life, marriage, children, career, socially. All stable in our own ways. It was the kind of night that when you get home your cheeks hurt from smiling.

I'm not quite sure where to end this post, because it's he kind of day that you can deconstruct and pick a part every memory, a paragraph for each. You'd end up reading web pages, upon web pages of my college years. And some of that I hold to sacred to share.
So I'll end with this...
the 20 yard line made my cheeks hurt.