This weekend, Hubs and I took the kids over to our alma mater, the University of Arkansas, for the first football game of the season.
Except that, as we were parking our car, Hubs realized he had left our tickets on the kitchen counter back at home.
In Oklahoma.
And we were in the parking lot of the stadium.
In Arkansas.
And I don't know if you noticed, but that would not be the same state.
We had a moment of panic, followed by a moment of frustration, followed by a moment of rejoicing (inside my head) that I am not responsible for the football tickets. It is so painfully often that I am the member of this family doing the stupid forgetting. Hubs was due one gigantic, flighty mistake, to balance out the 487 I committed last week. It keeps our universe even.
Thankfully, my resourceful man figured out a mostly-ethical-if-perhaps-a-little-dicey solution, the details of which I will not share here, in the event that there are any University of Arkansas athletic department personnel reading this blog. If there were ever a reason to engage in a little moral ambiguity, then SEC football would be it.
I'm so glad we made it, because truly, if you have not experienced the phenomenon that is a college football game day in the South, then you must head down this direction right away. It is a feast for the senses. In fact, I took my camera, with every intention of taking snapshots to show you. Then I remembered that my children were all dressed in red (along with our 72,000 closest friends), and my every moment was spent making sure that nobody got lost.
At one point, as we nudged our way through the throngs, my nine-year-old son caught my attention. "Mom," he asked, "is this the same stadium you and Dad came to when you were girlfriend and boyfriend?"
"Oh yes, it is," I told him, while he and his brothers rolled their eyes and made kissy noises.
Oh yes, it is. I always feel kind of grounded when I go back to that campus, the place where I found my groove and discovered Tennyson and grew up and and fell in love with my man. Looking over at him, it was as if nothing had changed.
Well, except that I'm carrying a MagnaDoodle in one hand and a three year old in the other. And I'm requiring considerably more under-eye concealer. And all those hills make me out of breath.
But other than that nothing has changed.
