Aggieland

So. I believe I’ve mentioned that it’s Spring Break.

I know what you’re thinking. TELL ME MORE.

Gulley and I made plans a while back to take the kids to College Station for the first half of the week and so I spent last Friday getting ready to go out of town for five days. Specifically, I cleaned our toilets. I hate to make it all sound so glamorous, but it’s the truth.

I’ve just realized as I get older that I enjoy coming home to a clean house and so I did what I could to make sure that I wouldn’t feel like I had to spend the last half of our Spring Break cleaning the bathrooms. Instead I can concentrate on the much more luxurious pursuit of cleaning out our closets.

On Friday night we went out to eat with Mimi and Bops before leaving town the next day and then Saturday morning we slept in late and enjoyed the morning with P until it was time to pack up the car and drive over to Gulley’s house to meet up with her and the boys.

In an unfortunate turn of events, it was a horrible, rainy, foggy drive. And Gulley and I drove separate cars because Caroline and I were leaving College Station a day early to drive to Houston for the night. But the drive was made more entertaining by the fact that Caroline decided to use this time to grill me on every aspect of my entire life, including such topics as my childhood years, what I wish I’d done differently and how I met P. I told Gulley by the time we made it to Honey and Big’s house I felt like I’d been in a therapy session. Mainly because Caroline asked after everything I told her “…and how did that make you feel?”

I believe she has a bright future as either a psychologist or a daytime talk show host.

We were supposed to go watch the Aggies play baseball on Saturday, but please see the above reference to foggy and rainy. It was not a day made for baseball, so we just spent the evening catching up with Honey and Big.

But we did make it to the baseball game on Sunday afternoon even though the weather wasn’t much improved. We just bundled up, brought some blankets and made the best of it.

And later Sunday evening, we fulfilled a goal that Gulley and I have long held deep in our hearts. We brought back family game night. First we played a good round of Skip Bo and then we moved on to Family Trivial Pursuit.

(Gulley also brought a dice game she’d bought called Tenzi. We’ve had a lot of laughs over it because we’d texted the week before about all the things each of us would pack for Spring Break and Gulley texted, “I’ll bring TENSION!” And I replied, “Please don’t bring tension. It’s a vacation!” even though I knew she meant “Tenzi” and had been a victim of autocorrect.)

(That story is much funnier in person.)

(Or maybe not. Let’s just pretend like it is.)

Anyway, here’s something you need to know about me. I LOVE Trivial Pursuit. I do. I love it. I love all manner of trivia and, true confession, I may struggle with some pride issues over all the various trivia I know. It is also true that in college several of my friends referred to me as Cliff Claven because I have a tendency to share (some might say overshare) interesting things that I know.

It’s a bit of a sickness.

But what’s the use in knowing all those facts if you don’t tell someone about them? I mean, it’s not like I actually know anything that’s useful in day to day life. I just remember things like “What artist designed the Campbell’s Soup cans?” and “What was the name of the bar Archie Bunker owned in the spinoff from All in the Family?”

(The answers are Andy Warhol and Archie Bunker’s Place, which was also the name of the spinoff.)

We divided up in three teams for Trivial Pursuit. Gulley and Will, Honey and Jacks and Caroline and me. Honey and Jacks were actually winning, but Caroline and I apparently share a gene for trivia arrogance because Will whispered to Gulley, “I’m tired of listening to Mel and Caroline brag about all the things they know.” Which is why he laughed out loud a little too hard when Caroline missed a question about Jupiter’s moons and promptly got sent to his room for being a bad sport. Although he insisted later that he wasn’t laughing because we missed the question, but because he just thought it was hilarious that Jupiter has so many moons.

I’m sure that was it.

Also, Caroline and I are going to work really hard to tamp down our trivia enthusiasm. It seems the only thing to do if our Family Game Night renaissance is going to succeed.

In a bad turn of events, Will got sick later that night and Gulley ended up taking care of him until it was morning and they could get into a nearby med clinic. He ended up needing a breathing treatment and was basically diagnosed with a virus that just needs to run its course.

But since he and Gulley were exhausted, we ended up changing our plans for how we’d spend Monday. In all fairness, they weren’t really exciting plans to begin with but we had mentioned maybe going to see a movie and possibly even bowling.

Instead, I offered Caroline and Jackson a trip to the local Academy to look around (Yes. I mean the sporting goods store. Look for more travel tips in my upcoming brochure entitled “How to Give Your Kids an Awesome Spring Break”.) and then because we are just this out of control, we decided to also go to Aggieland Outfitters to look around because Jackson wanted a new A&M hat and Caroline wanted an Aggie soccer shirt. While we were there, they decided it might be fun to play a few rounds of air hockey in the store lobby.

I took that picture, texted it to Gulley and said, “I feel that someday our kids will be reminiscing and say, ‘Remember how all our friends used to go skiing for Spring Break and our moms took us to play air hockey at Aggieland Outfitters?”

She replied, “Because their mothers are AWESOME!”

And also know a lot of trivia.

Well. So this pretty much sums up my demeanor on Saturday afternoon as I watched the Aggies play LSU.

It was a low point.

The great irony is I felt good about the game before it started. I wasn’t worried about LSU. Which, in hindsight, feels pretty stupid because LES MILES. It makes total sense that if anyone has truly figured out how to stop Johnny Manziel, it’s him. He’s some sort of weird genius with a side of some Louisiana voodoo mixed in.

And it’s safe to say that I will never wear that ’94 Aggie football sweatshirt again. I put that thing on, enormous sleeves and all, and wore it through the first quarter until I decided it was clearly contributing to our horrible performance and changed into a sensible fleece for the second quarter. Sadly, this did little to help the Aggies. It was too late for us.

I think it’s also obvious that we need to never wear those gray uniforms again. Our colors are blush and bashful. Oh wait. That’s wrong. Our colors are maroon and white. Thus, we need to wear uniforms that are either maroon or white.

And so that’s that.

On the upside, Gulley and I were at Honey and Big’s house in Bryan watching the game. Uncle Johnny and Aunt Diane came over to watch it with us and we all agreed we felt optimistic about the Aggies chances. And once it became apparent that we’d been delusional, we were able to relax and eat all manner of chips and dips and tell stories and laugh. So even though the game was a low, the game-watching experience was a high.

And so I’ve come to a point in the college football season where my grief over what could have been eases into acceptance for the reality. It could be worse, I could be a Florida Gators fan. My word. They have fallen on some hard times in Gator nation.

Speaking of hard times, we left for Bryan on Friday evening. The plan was for Caroline and I to pick up Gulley and her boys in Gruene around 6:15 because they were visiting some cousins there. But what I didn’t count on was the pouring rain and the traffic and the fact that people in San Antonio don’t like to drive over three miles an hour when the roads are wet. So what is normally a thirty minute drive took an hour and a half. An hour and a half where Caroline began to complain she felt nauseated.

By the time we got to Gulley and the boys I was a little frazzled. And by a little I mean that I needed to be medicated. But we’d come too far to turn back. Plus I knew if we could just power through and get to Honey and Big’s house it would be totally worth it once we slept in late and woke up to Shipley’s donuts on Saturday.

Around San Marcos, Caroline decided the problem was she was hungry and wanted to drive through Arby’s to pick up a roast beef sandwich and some fries. So that’s what we did. And everything was fine until Will decided the smell of Arby’s was making him feel carsick and began to complain of nausea.

Then in true Will form, he began to throw up between San Marcos and Bastrop which is a stretch of road that could compete with the Sahara desert for desolate. Fortunately, Gulley has become a master of holding a plastic grocery sack while Will throws up and so we powered down Highway 21 to the delicate sound of Will retching into an HEB bag as the rain poured outside and I came one step closer to needing to check into a mental health facility.

For those of you keeping score at home, yes, this now makes forty-six road trips where Will has thrown up. And, honestly, as someone who struggles with the carsickness I feel his pain. And the remarkable part is we all assume our positions. Gulley turns around and holds the bag, Jackson says, “Caroline, scoot over closer to me”, Caroline says, “It’s okay, Will”, and I whisper the serenity prayer to myself while declaring, “We’re almost to a gas station. Just hold on. We’re almost there.”

By the time we arrived at Honey and Big’s we were a carload of people in the throes of post-traumatic stress syndrome. We hit the front door and Will announced, “I’ve never barfed that amount of barf in my whole life.” Which was something we all intuitively knew based on the amount of HEB bags used. But about thirty minutes later everyone was showered and in pjs and Gulley and I had consumed a couple of glasses of wine for purely medicinal purpose and life seemed worth living again.

And I was right. Saturday morning as we all sat around the kitchen table with donuts and kolaches, the terrible events of Friday were but a distant memory.

Then the game.

I believe I’ve covered that part.

But here’s the thing. There are people and places that take the sting out of even big disappointments and understand exactly what you mean when you declare a sweatshirt to be bad mojo. And those are the best places of all.

Those are the places worth driving through wind and rain and throw up to arrive at your destination.

I didn’t even mention daylight savings time yesterday.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate gaining an hour. Because I do. I totally do. I just don’t really understand the point of the whole thing. We are no longer a nation made up of farmers who need more or less daylight or whatever the original intent. But like so many other things in life, the government doesn’t seem to realize that the earth being tilted on its axis as it rotates around the sun really takes care of the whole daylight issue and God doesn’t really need Congress to keep the clock straight.

And then last night I dropped Caroline off at soccer practice at 6:00 and ran to Target and I felt like it was the middle of the dadgum night. I walked the aisles at Target and wondered about all these nightowls that were out roaming the streets at the ungodly hour of 6:25 p.m.

To add to all this disconcertment, I noticed something else as I drove back through the neighborhood to pick up Caroline from practice. Inflatable turkeys. Enormous inflatable turkeys in several front yards. Is this a thing? Are we doing this now? Because I don’t know that I’m equipped to live in a world that requires Thanksgiving yard decorations.

It was bad enough when people began to put up orange lights and spider webs at Halloween. I gave into that madness but I’m drawing a line in the sand with the turkeys. This is not what the Pilgrims had in mind.

In other news, I have a confession to make. When I wrote yesterday’s post I hadn’t actually taken those clothes to Goodwill yet, although everything was bagged up and ready to go. I just ran out of time on Sunday afternoon and planned to take them yesterday.

But then someone left a comment yesterday morning on my Facebook page suggesting that maybe I shouldn’t get rid of the Texas A&M Football ’94 sweatshirt because the Aggies beat LSU in Baton Rouge in 1994 and maybe that sweatshirt would bring us good luck as the Aggies head back to LSU on November 23 this year.

And this is just the kind of crazy logic and superstition I buy in to. Like Coach Sumlin might need me to wear that sweatshirt on November 23 to ensure an Aggie victory. Of course he does.

However, I like to pretend these kind of crazy thoughts haven’t taken up residence in my brain so I kept the sweatshirt in the Goodwill bag all afternoon and only thought about it occasionally.

Until I got this text from my dear friend and college roommate, Jen:

Well that felt like a gauntlet had been thrown. A sure sign that I had almost made a tragic mistake. So I texted Jen and Gulley back:

And included this picture:

Adding to the already clear signs that I was supposed to keep the shirt was the revelation that 94 happened to be DaMontre Moore’s number until he left for the NFL after last season. For those who don’t know, DaMontre was a phenomenal defensive end for Texas A&M and also known as DaMonster. And so if I were to ever wear that sweatshirt out in public I could totally claim it was a retro-chic tribute sweatshirt to DaMontre and certainly not the year I graduated from college.

Immediately, my twenty year old sweatshirt became cool again. Even though my enthusiasm was dampened slightly when I googled DaMontre to make sure I spelled his name right and discovered he was born in 1992. Which means a player now playing in the NFL is only two years older than my Aggie sweatshirt.

But I still absolutely plan to wear it on November 23 just in case Johnny Manziel and Coach Sumlin need a little help beating the Tigers.

Even though I’m a little concerned those enormous sleeves are going to get in my way while I cheer the Aggies on to victory.