I am very proud of my dad for standing.
My dad was up for the weekend, and he had gotten us tickets to the Northwestern–Ohio State game on saturday night. The tickets, since he’s not a season ticket holder, were waaaaaaaay up in the upper deck.
I decided to try something different: I decided to drag my dad into the student section.
This was no easy task, as my dad is almost 66 years old, and especially because of his beard, he does not particularly look like an undergraduate student.
I wanted to take him to the student section mostly because I wanted him to see how much more fun a game is from the student section. He went to a school that is not particularly known for its athletic prowess, so he had never really seen a football game from a huge student section where people are painted purple and singing the fight song.
My dad’s a funny guy, and since he’s retired and gotten remarried, he’s been a lot more game to try random things. It’s like he’s an old college student. He agreed to at least try to get to the student section.
I concocted a scheme of going in through the young alums entrance (where people buy tickets and can bring whoever they want, thus it would make sense for a young alum to bring a parent), then sidling over to the student section, flashing my WildCard (student ID) instead of my student ticket (which I had given to the Monkey) if anyone asked questions, and dragging dad along for the ride.
I managed to sneak him by, and it must have been funny to anyone over on the OSU side with binoculars, because there was one Santa Claus-like old man wearing an Atlanta Braves cap among a sea of insane college students.
The one thing I had been concerned about was that the student section always stands for the entire game since the marching band is in front of us, and they stand for the whole game, and we wouldn’t be able to see otherwise.
Dad’s in good shape for a guy his age, but I know he’s had some problems with having sore legs more in the last few years. This happened especially after he broke his leg after a skiing trip (which is fun long story for another time when I have nothing to write about), and then walked around Europe in an air cast for 3 weeks.
He’s developed a limp (which he dismisses by claiming it doesn’t exist, then saying that even if it does, it doesn’t hurt), but he can also outlast me on a ski slope, and I’m 1/3 his age. So I thought he’d be OK for the first half, but would probably want to go up to our real seats by the second.
Boy, did he prove me wrong.
He was still fine when my back started to disagree with the idea of me standing for four straight hours. My friends were really impressed.
“My dad is 15 years younger than your dad, and there is absolutley no way in hell he would have ever been able to stand for the whole game!” was one of the comments I got. I told him this morning when I was taking him to the airport, and he was amused.
Further ammunition for the people in Atlanta who can’t believe that my dad was ever a workaholic. Personally, I think it’s him trying to do something with the energy which basically kept him awake for about 40 straight years (college, law school, 35 of 40 years of being a lawyer).
The only complication was that I had to run and get him hot dogs, since getting him back in after going out of the student section would have been a much more complicated operation, but all went well otherwise.
Everyone agreed after my dad went home after about 10 of us stopped at Nevin’s for a postgame beer: My dad may be an old fart, but he’s a cool old fart.