The Rebel Housewife - Sherri's Rebel Blog: The Writing Life

Facebook post - 9/18/2010:
"Grady High School won last night: 61 - 0. Which is kind of hard to even brag about. Perfect football night in our renovated stadium. Ohmygosh, though, the dancers, drill team & flag girls?! Straight out of the movie Baseketball -- not our kids' mothers' high school marching band!!"

We attended our first high school football game, as high school parents, Friday night. It was a perfect night in our newly-renovated football stadium: temperature just right, slight breeze, clear and beautiful. The stands were filled, but not too full, with adults and kids of all ages.

We found friends in the crowd, and 10yo Boy Phenom was ecstatic to find a group of 5th grade boys that he knew from school last year, to hang out with, visit the concession stand en masse and migrate around the home grandstand, freed for a bit from ever-watchful parents and direct scrutiny. While they roamed, 13yo Drama Queen enjoyed the game and watching the marching bands, Home and Visitor, in the stands and during the half-time show.

For this article, I have to refer to 15yo Puberty Angst Boy in some way more fitting, since our 10th grader, a member of the school's Army JROTC program, was selected for Color Guard duty, the presentation of the flags at the beginning of the game. We were so proud of him, as the formation of five cadets carried the colors out onto the field in procession. He carried the rifle and marched on the right of the small group, his weapon at proper Shoulder Arms. It is almost more than I can write about to see my son, so tall and handsome, dressed in his full Army JROTC uniform, serving his school, our community, our country. I wouldn't have thought it was such a big deal, such a proud moment, but it really was. It was a glimpse of the future -- however he chooses to fulfill his personal destiny -- almost overwhelming.

Of course, then he immediately ditched us for the entire game, hiding up in the grandstand with his friends. We never even saw him after he marched off the field. He barely deigned to answer our text messages when we were leaving -- wouldn't even walk home with us. He is 15, after all.

And, oh, what a half-time show! The girls...wow...glitter, sequins, spandex, body parts and hairography (do you watch GLEE?!) we never even imagined possible or appropriate when I was in the flag corps...yes, 25 years ago, but still!

The game itself was a blow-out: 61 - 0. I couldn't help feeling sorry for the other team, but our high school players were impressive. When their individual pictures flashed up on the new Jumbo-tron, they looked like grown men, and I am pretty sure there were college and professional scouts in the stands. We have a good team like that, which is pretty cool, even if this was our family's first football game, our second year at the high school. (Last year, they were renovating the stadium and the games were all played at another high school.)

At the end of the 3rd quarter, it was already 61 - 0, and we were tired, sore (concrete benches), and slightly nauseous from over-sized bags of cotton candy on empty stomachs. We walked home, a quarter-mile across Piedmont Park.

13yo Drama Queen carried her umbrella, swinging and tossing it like the baton girls in the marching band.

10yo Boy Phenom...and these kids are the siblings who constantly fight and bicker, torment and annoy each other, brutally exclude and ignore (at best) -- these kids hate each other, right?! You know how other parents always say, "Oh, but if anyone ever messed with one, the others would be the first to defend and protect!" No. Not my kids.

But...10yo Boy Phenom picked up a stick and walked all the way home -- carrying that stick at Shoulder Arms, military-style -- just like his big brother. That is something I want to remember for the rest of my life. Perfect Moments, indeed.