A Non-Outnumbered Weekend

Every year, my mom tries to take my boys on a special night or weekend trip without John and me. Jack and Luke think this is great fun, getting to do things they wouldn’t normally get to do - like stay up until 2 am watching movies.

She took them to the Lake of the Ozarks to stay at Tan-Tar-A for the weekend. They left first thing Friday morning and returned Sunday afternoon. This is one of those areas where a mother’s emotions are in conflict. On one hand, I was excited by the prospect of a relaxing weekend without the boys. On the other hand, I was saddened by the prospect of a lonely weekend without the boys. Knowing that the boys would have a terrific time tipped the scale from saddened to excited.

I was also excited at the prospect of spending a weekend in a house in which I was not outnumbered by boys. Just me and my husband! Mano y womano! I pictured lazy hours around the house, sleeping in, reading the newspaper in bed, perusing the wares at the Best of Missouri Market, eating out at a fabulous restaurant, seeing a movie of my choice and so on. Basically, the weekend had the makings of a woman’s (at least my) dream.

So, how did I spend my weekend? In Columbia, Missouri at the Mizzou-Nebraska football game. How is it that, even when I’m not outnumbered, I end up doing decidedly male activities? No offense to the alums of Mizzou or to the women who love to watch football. I just happen to be neither of those things.

When our neighbors invited us, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go. But, I had never done the whole tailgate/college football thing, so I was curious. And our neighbors are great fun, so I knew it would be a fun time. We could leave for Columbia early on Saturday, tailgate, watch the game, drive back to St. Louis, and I’d still have plenty of time to cram in some relaxing. But, when I found out that the day game was changed to a night game that started at 8:15 pm, I saw my relaxing weekend slipping away.

So how was it? Magnificent. The energy at this game, from the tailgating crowd (some of which started before 10 am so I’d say their revelry may have been fueled more by beverage than the upcoming game) to the crowd at the game was palpable. It was hard not to be taken in and caught up by the experience of it all.

There were over 70,000 people in attendance at the stadium. Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals, seats less than 50,000. This may be the norm in other college towns, but where I went to college (University of Missouri-Rolla), sports just weren’t that important and the football facilities were slightly larger than that of a football town's high school. And, it was a “Gold Rush” game, so everyone but Nebraska fans wore gold.

One of my favorite parts of the game was when the crowd started doing the wave. I normally don’t care much about the wave, but to watch it progress around a stadium filled with gold was irresistible. There was one small section filled with red shirts, the Nebraska fans, who didn’t much feel like doing the wave. Whenever the wave reached this section, all of the fans in gold stopped cheering and yelled “Boooo,” until the next section of gold started the wave again and the crowd switched from booing to cheering. It was hilarious! I tried to take video of it to post, but only seeing it live could do it justice.

To top it all off, Mizzou creamed Nebraska 41 to 6 (sorry Nebraska fans). It was an unforgettable night.

Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow. Had I done what I wanted to do on my non-outnumbered weekend, I would have missed out on an experience bursting with such exuberance and exhilaration that it captivated me, a non-football fan, so completely that I had to write about it on my blog.