On Friday night, all four of our children spent the night with their cousins because Peter and Whitney LOVE us and let us have a night out together since it was the first and last (for a while) weekend that Taido and I will both be home.  He returns to Castle Bluff madness this weekend.   For part of our date night, we did something we realized we have never actually done together.  We attended a high school football game.  And of course, you might wonder why on earth two people who enjoy football as little as we do would spend a portion of such a blessed evening on football and I am really not completely sure why myself, except that it is just something Taido does.  He shows up at home football games and walks around and talks to people for about 45 minutes and then leaves.  I’m not sure he even sees any of the game.

So we were working it into our evening.  He said it would probably take like 30 minutes.  As he parked in a random field within walking distance of both the high school and our son’s middle school, I tried not to get too nervous.  I couldn’t really remember the last time I had been in the North Little Rock High School Stadium.  Though as I said, Taido goes to these things regularly, in six years of being back in North Little Rock, I had not yet darkened the door.   But I was pretty giddy just to be kid-free.  And I hadn’t had any major shots this week to my self-esteem, at least not that I could remember, so I was feeling pretty not too bad.

Now I don’t know how it works at every high school, but I suspect that there is universally a similar set up to the seating situation that goes down at our local high school.  The parents, grandparents, families with younger children and anyone else who is not a student sit down, taking up roughly three or four sections of bleachers.  And then at one end of the field the band is taking up another section.  But the students.  They STAND UP for the entire game in their OWN section.  There are no signs saying that only students can stand there, but it’s pretty much understood.  I know that Taido actually enters this no adult zone on a regular basis, along with his other partners in crime.  I’ve never actually seen it, as will become apparent, but I know they do it.  So as we’re walking up into the stands he tells me that he will just find me someone to sit with really quick while he goes and visits with students and then we can leave.  And I’m like, sure whatever. I have no kids!  I mean really, I look to my left and right and there is not a toddler hanging off of me.

So we walk the stadium.  After we walk through a second time, I start to feel like I’m really in high school because that’s what you do when you need a break from standing up in the bleachers.  You pace around in the front and try to see people.  Or try to get people to see you.  Or something like that.  He text messages a couple of our friends.  Neither of whom are there.  In the sea of parents, we don’t immediately see people we know.  Or people I know, which is a way smaller number than people Taido knows.  And then we are totally wasting precious time so I say, I’ll just sit down over here and wait for you.  Really.  I mean I forgot to bring a book to read, but I don’t mind. But I guess it’s just NOT OKAY to sit down by yourself at a high school football game, because he was insistent that I just come with him and go see kids, some of which I might actually know.  And so I follow him over to the student section.

The student section is tightly packed, as in sardines.  But the pathways to the left and the right of the section are clear, and so I assume of course that we are just going to walk AROUND the perimeter of the students and kind of wave.  Like in pageants.  I follow Taido up like five or six steps and kids are yelling his name and just yelling in general and I’m just standing around smiling and then he starts to do something really strange.  He starts walking sideways into the middle of this group with his back to a row of students who are watching the game and then he’s talking up (because he’s down a step) to the row of students who are facing him (but also watching the game over him).  And I’m like…wait a minute, I didn’t realize we were going IN. I’m still standing over on the steps at the side and he looks down the row at me and motions for me to FOLLOW HIM into the middle of all these kids.  This seems like a good time to mention that I don’t like crowds.  I don’t really attend concerts or fairs or go to theme parks or pretty much any place in which I might find myself sandwiched between lots of strangers.  Except for now, because I think he might be forever swallowed up into the mass and then I won’t ever find him which would make for a stinky date.  So I start moving sideways through the crowd.  I say hi to the very few students that I know.  I smile.  I try not to touch anyone, which is impossible, so I keep saying excuse me.  It sounds a little like a mouse.

We continue to sort of snake through the crowd for what seems like forever.  When Taido wants to go to a new row, he just says something graceful like, hey, I need to go through there, and then he squeezes between two people and on up to another row.  It was during one of these awkward sqeezing moments, as he is asking someone else why they aren’t going to Castle Bluff next weekend, that I hear what I think surely cannot be but absolutely has to be about Taido and me.  From a rather sassy blonde gal below me who had her face all screwed up with disgust, I heard the words, Who are those OLD people?