Heartbreaker blurbs

On Saturday, JG and I spent the day with my freshman-year roommate and neighbors tailgating and watching our alma mater play Valerie’s. Much to my dismay, after five overtimes, we lost the game 62-56. Argh. I can’t even think about it without feeling the agony of defeat. I poured so much energy into those overtimes — hey, jumping and screeching takes a lot out of a girl — that I was exhausted after the fact. If we had won, it would have been worth it, but since we didn’t, I felt absolutely drained. Thus, it is time to resurrect the blurbage.

To(w)tally confusing and amusing
When we tailgate, JG and I usually park in a side lot where, if we’re lucky, we can shimmy up to a brick island and use it as a sort of patio. Then, we can spread out all of our gear without taking up another parking space. When we all arrived, the lot was basically empty, but two tow trucks came to remedy the situation. As far as we could tell, they were simply relocating cars from one lot to ours. Each truck had one car on the bed and another pulling behind, and the drivers re-parked the cars in other spots. Our whole crew watched silently, transfixed. What was going on? If the cars were parked illegally, why weren’t they being towed outright? One of our number walked over to a driver and, after a brief conversation with gesturing and nodding, he reported, “The story is … he has no idea. Someone told him to move the cars and he didn’t ask why.” Very helpful. While we found the rather violent process of shaking down the cars from the truck beds quite entertaining, the best part of the enigmatic prelude to the game was the message on the back of the truck cabs: “We meet by accident.” Love it.

Head of the slow lane
I learned how to watch football from watching the score board and asking JG tons of questions while we sat in the UD student stands on the south end zone, which allowed for zero depth perception. As a result, I am fairly well-versed in the overall mechanics of the game, even if I couldn’t tell you what a specific position does. My normal sports-watching circle is entirely fluent in football-ese, while I muddle along and translate in my head, so I am used to being one step behind everyone else. I don’t see the penalties right away and I can’t identify the players very quickly, but I can keep up well enough. Well, for the first time, as I sat with my friends, I was one of the most knowledgeable people in the row. What in the world! I pointed out which numbers on our team would most likely be big players and eventually explained how the overtime periods worked. I surprised myself when, even before the ref signaled the call, I leapt to my feet and started hollering that the Richmond receiver did not have control when he went down and to give them a first down would be a horrible call! Meanwhile, my friends just stared at me and I felt a little silly about getting so worked up. But the refs ruled it incomplete, after all!

Awesomeness never fades
During my sophomore year, I chose to stay in freshman housing as a mentor, so I didn’t really see my freshman-year friends very often. JG and I were dating and the two circles seemed to separate. We saw each other haphazardly and always on good terms, but I always kind of regretted that I wasn’t a part of their close-knit gang for the rest of college. But my friends are such cool people that they can just pick up where we left off, even if we haven’t seen each other for months and months. They’ll rub it in my face that JG and I “weren’t dating” freshman year, quote lines of HIMYM when we find out we all watch it religiously, and start off stories with, “First of all, let’s get it straight that I am awesome.” They’ll bring huge coolers of drinks, lemon-pepper shrimp to grill, and a giant cookie cake for dessert. They’ll recall how JG and I had an awesome wedding because “it wasn’t all scary and huge like, ‘I’m a wedding and I’m gonna take up your entire weekend!’” Best of all, they’ll call me RaRa, just like old times, fill me in on their amazing trip to Europe, and make the day go by in a snap. Man, I wish they lived nearer to us.

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