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Before
a couple of weeks ago, it had been over twenty years since my wife
and I attended a Texas
A&M football game, partly because we've spent the past two decades
or so raising three daughters who've been more interested in spending
our cash on hamsters, horses, dance recitals and any product manufactured
by the Apple corporation than football tickets. To make our game
attendance even more unlikely, watching my beloved alma mater play
football makes me so nervous that my innards feel like I just ate
a large family of live hedgehogs.
Now that our eldest and most expensive daughter is herself a Texas
A&M Aggie, I've run out of excuses not to go watch the Aggies give
me apocalyptic indigestion live. In fact, we broke our streak on
a recent trip to College
Station to bring our daughter a new debit card after hers finally
vaporized.
After dining on some scrumptious cooking grease disguised as burgers
and fries, we headed to my daughter's townhome to park and then
walk a mile to Kyle Field for the game. Although we wanted to park
closer, parking spots at Texas A&M on game days are about as rare
as a sighting of University of Texas superfan Matthew McConaughey
playing a set of Aggie-themed bongos in the nude.
Luckily it was early September in the Brazos Valley, which meant
that our stroll was nice and crisp, in the sense that over-fried
bacon is crisp, then steamed in an Instant Pot-that catches fire.
My youngest daughter, who has an aversion to most physical movement,
was convinced that she would die of acute climate change at any
moment, and she would only roll her eyes when I repeatedly asked
her if she wanted to borrow some of my deodorant.
We were almost saved from the sidewalk lava by one of the convenient
university shuttle busses, but by the time we ran up to board, it
was stuffed to capacity with college students selfishly enjoying
the air-conditioning and probably praying that the Griswold family
wouldn't try to squeeze in.
When we finally reached Kyle Field, our daughters rehydrated with
some concession-stand burritos and giant pretzels, and we found
our seats-along with about 100,000 other sweaty Aggies. It was like
being in a massive open-air locker room after running laps in junior
high P.E.-minus the jock straps and AXE body spray.
Once the game began, I felt like I was back in college-enthusiastically
doing the Aggie yells, singing "The Aggie War Hymn," and looking
forward to that first Aggie score-when I could score a kiss from
my best girl (if my youngest daughter and her enormous pretzel hadn't
been in the way). In the part of the War Hymn where Aggies lock
arms and sway back and forth to "Saw Varsity's horn's off," I suddenly
found myself in the burly, one-armed embrace of my neighboring fellow
Aggie, who was roughly the size of André the Giant. (Needless to
say, I didn't ask him if he'd like to borrow my deodorant.)
True to form, the Aggies had me chewing my fingernails down to my
elbows until they pulled away in the second half for an old-fashioned
blowout, the only kind of Aggie game my guts can enjoy.
We finished our weekend in Aggieland the next day with a guided
tour by our eldest daughter of the buildings where she attends her
classes, a visit to the campus bookstore to break what was left
of the bank on Aggie sweatshirts and stuffed animals, and a stop
for some delicious drinks at the local Dutch Bros Coffee, which
is kind of like Starbucks—only more Dutch.
It was a truly great weekend visiting with our daughter, enjoying
the game, and reminiscing about our college days. And I'm actually
kind of looking forward to attending another football game—if
I can convince my stomach to come along with me.
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