Complications

10|camera

Tyla Bradley

I've never liked football.

The whole game is kind of caveman like, or well maybe that thing with the Romans. The Colosseum? Yeah, this is the Americans Colosseum. We throw boys in the ring, and expect them to come out the victor. And they do it, they love it. They run around tackling each other and we sit on the sidelines and cheer them on. I don't even get the rules really. You run tell the orange pointer thing and then what, they move it, first down? What even is a down?

"It's a play," Zoey explains her eyes trained on the field, "they run a play and see how far they get. When their tackled that's where the ball is set for the next play." She points to the field, "here watch!"

The boys set up on the field all squatting down ready to pounce. They remind me of a bunch of cats perched and ready for the kill. The quarterback yells something and the ball comes out and through someone's legs up into his hand. He back tracks, jumping on the balls of his feet and scanning the field. This is actually the miraculous and most engaging part of the whole game. He gets ready to throw, studies the field and than boom! The balls spiraling through the air and swift! Somehow it lands in a receivers awaiting hands and their off.

This is the only thing that I can see as being why people like football. But still, the downs, the tackling, the setup, what?

"Yeah okay, that kind a makes sense, but why do they number them?"

"Because if you don't get ten yards in four downs it's automatically the other teams ball."

"But why?" She ignores me and instead just rolls her eyes before turning her attention back to the game. I've been doing this to her the entire game and probably asked her the same question again and again.

I'm sure she's sick of it, but I'm sick of this game so...

No sport is fun to watch if you don't understand the rules.

I'm at this game all decked out in my student council jacket, rich with the school colors. One of my old t-shirt from a past year and I have actual face paint on my face! I'm a walking poster child for this thing! Zoey insisted we match. 'For the pictures', she said. I don't care for any pictures because I don't care to remember this night!

There are multiple things about sporting events that bother me. First we're crammed into the student section, rubbing up against sweaty angsty kids. They decide not only to stand up the whole game but to stand on the bleachers no less.

Idiots!

If I could sit I would, but then I'd have peoples butts waving in my face, mmmmm, not pleasant. Instead I've hooked arms with Zoe and am following her in the cheers.

"How do you know these cheers?!" I yell over the crowd.

She shrugs smiling, "I may have gone to a lot of basketball games last year."

"With who?"

"Andrea."

I nod my head, "I didn't know you liked these things so much," I mumbled under my breath. Why did she never ask me to come?

Because she knows I'd never go but I'm here now aren't I?

My eyes trail back to the game, it's almost half time. The score is currently tied and the tension seems to be building. Two players—on our team—seem to be yelling at each other. Of course I can't hear anything that they're saying but then one yanks off his helmet. Walker?

Then that means...

Man they can't even keep their shit together on the field. Those two should not be going to the same school. It's like watching a never ending match of king of the hill.