Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Nothing like a high school football game to get you back in the groove of Texas life and times. Last weekend was my ten year high school reunion, which not so conveniently coincided with my trip home, so I had no excuse but to go.

My friends in New York sometimes compare my younger days to the TV show Friday Night Lights. I haven't seen it, but I probably don't need to--any show about high school football fever is probably a fair approximation of my former lifestyle at Austin High. After all, every Friday night of football season was spent in a stadium. And we loved it.

It should come as no surprise then that the reunion revolved around a big game: AHS vs. WHS (for those of you that don't speak Texas football, that is code for Austin High (my alma mater) competes against Westlake (the enemy). Drinks were had at a bar near the stadium which was filled with devoted mothers wearing representative school colors. Although our school colors are maroon and white, many mothers, long-legged daughters, and boyish boys from our side were wearing camouflage and face paint--ready for war.

A few words about the enemy. They are bigger, faster and richer than we will ever be. They were 25 years ago, they were 10 years ago, they are now. Ever since I can remember, we've wanted to beat Westlake and beat them bad. It's always been the most anxiously anticipated game of the season.

But, usually, a rivalry connotes some sort of competition. What's funny/sad is that our season-on-season scorecard is something like 2-72, i.e., Westlake has beaten us nearly a million times.

Lo and behold, on Friday night, I found myself under the white glow of fluorescent lights as we watched Austin High get slaughtered by Westlake. What can I say? We weren't that surprised.

The next night was spent watching another loss but on a much larger scale--Texas (the team that should always win) played Texas Tech (the team that should always lose). We watched it on several big screens at a bar downtown. Up and down the street people were hooked to the game inside bars, inside restaurants, outside on the flat screen of the mobile taco truck. It was absurd.

You needn't have watched the game to know the play-by-play; the screams of excitement and woeful groans were indicative. We lost that one too.

In between the two games, I caught up with people I once knew, some of whom I remembered, and some of whom I was thankful had remembered to put on a nametag. Nothing much to report. The 4th grade bully is now an attorney that represents fat cat insurance companies. The sweet high school missionary is still a missionary, but now a mother of two with another on the way. She and her husband are building their own house from scratch on an Indonesian island. The little blond metal mouth is now a slightly taller blond man who speaks German and a smattering of Czech--much easier without braces, I would imagine. There's only one divorce that I know of. And many marriages and small babies (left at home with grandmama). The whole experience was rather bland--I confess, I was hoping for drama.

The only cringe-inducing moment occurred near the end of the night when a certain girl named Amber, cursed with a long, unrequited 14-year crush on a boy named Brandon, got on the microphone and asked him to marry her. He had anticipated as much, and had already left the building.