"And the pass is complete to..." echoes through the stadium amid the cheers of the fans and thumping of the bass drum—a thumping I can feel in my stomach.
If I were to judge the size of the crowd by the air temperature, I'd be way off the mark. The heat makes it feel like we're a shoulder-to-shoulder, packed-out house. But I have the freedom to overflow into the next three seats if I want to. The three after that, before the steps, belong to the little tow-head girl who has ripped out her neat braids, in typical three-year-old fashion, so that her hair is more in line with her activity level as she walks along the seats, and then climbs over and circles back around to start over. She stops every now and again to watch me as I sketch and scribble in my notepad, but her mother, one row higher and arms full of baby brother, calls her back if she ventures any closer to me.
On the warm air, wafts the aromas of cinnamon twists, hot dogs, sports cream and sweat, and I'm glad I ate before I came, though the southwestern salad dressing left an oily taste in my mouth that the mints I'm sucking on don't quite overcome.
The blue, hard, plastic seat is uncomfortable and I shift sideways to allow blood to flow back into posterior while cutting off the supply to my legs and to see the guys in the white shirts line up facing the guys in the orange shirts. From here in the twenty-ninth row, they look about the size of action figures and, incredibly, seem smaller on the Jumbo-Tron than they do on the field. If I put on my glasses, I might be able to make out the numbers on their shirts, as they run at each other and fall into a heap.
The referees all blow their whistles and the orange-and-black clad, hand-waving pep band strikes up another round of the fight song. They dance, watering the lawn, mashing the potatoes, paddling the boat, and something the something (I have no idea what to call that, it looks like they are mimicking unicorns charging into battle).
I'm uncomfortable, I'm tired, and I'm messing up my schedule, but I'm with the band.
