I’ve had lots of folks tell me that I’ve got to get into the football scene at campus– from tailgating to cheering in the student section, from bars to apartment parties. Well, as of last weekend, I have! Sort of.

I visited the one tailgate, and it was fine– but I don’t drink, so it was mostly eating my aunt’s Empanadias (which are somehow different from Empanadas? My taste buds don’t mind the extra syllable).

Mostly, my friends and I walked around the now-vacant spots on campus in white-out gear, looking at the sky and the crisp light pollution bouncing back from the clouds. It was quite something to feel the reverberations from the stadium all the way in Sunset Park– in fact, we ended up going back to check it out, after the game had cooled off.

We found this sea of white tents in layers going out to the horizon– I’ve tried my best to capture what it looked like against the darkness, but believe you me, it was striking. These must be where the Old Boys Club meets, to spin the classic narrative among CEOs– the trappings of a tailgate in white and gold certainly seemed to fit the bill. And even more surprising than the view was the vast amount of wasted food and containers left to be swept into garbage bags, lots of it strewn about with the assumption of the work of others. To our luck, a benevolent alumni couple offered us the scoop on the best foods to pick up before they were taken away.

(Image Credit: Author)

“There’s a tray of cupcakes next to that table,” said the one about my Mom’s age, out of the side of her mouth all sly-like. As she slid a cookie tray into my hands, I think she was once again a kid, living sneakily in the moment with us. It was nice. In that second, it is like we are pulling it off together.

This combination of Robin-Hood-esque resource relocation and receiving the gift of free food made it into an event as exciting as Christmas morning. There is this stifled excitement in the air when we return a second time to make the big hits– rescuing food from the very fancy tents– and my nonchalant gallop down the hill tells it all. I feel like Saint Nicholas and his antsy reindeer.

[Check out our loot!]

(Image Credit: Author)

The excitement of making out with our haul was tempered by the grand scale of the waste we beheld there. I guess what I’m saying is– there’s this type of reality that hits you when you’re standing in the middle of an open field of grass, surrounded by more aluminum cans than you could ever count, more piles that you could ever investigate, and you know that there are so many more fields like this throughout the tailgating scene at campus. It makes me think about lots of things, but mostly it just makes me sad.

Something about the trash and the thoughtless disposal of intact food and plastic containers really hits me (especially with a food drive going on in Atherton that same night!). I don’t know what it is, other than very, very different from how I usually live day-to-day. But there’s something else in it, too, that is less heavy and more intriguing– just the simple fact of other people, and the events of their lives, that you come across without seeing them.

These nights make me think about a lot of things– there is just something special in seeing the remnants of the people who were there, and not their actual faces. I would best describe it through this picture that I took on the same night:

All of those little windows, darkened or lit up, illuminated with fairy strings that are hooked or taped or command-stripped to the wall, just how each individual person wanted them. They are turned on, set brightly to welcome the night life or coolly for the reading of a book. I can’t see those people, and I’ve never met them, and I’d never know them if I did. But I see their outline on the grass like they were lying right next to me. I think that’s really something.

(Image credit: Author)

 

Maybe it’s just that I’m from a rural area, but folks from my home town will tell you that there’s plenty night life to be had in the traditional sense, just like everywhere else. I just like things a little different– a little more personal– a little closer to home, if that makes sense.

Maybe you’d tell me– it’s a tailgate! It’s two-dimensional! And maybe that’s the case. But I have always preferred the third dimension when I’m looking at people, if I really want to know what they’re about, and this extra layer of conceptualization can be a little bit of a bummer as well as a pickup. So– will I try it again?

I only have one answer to that.

See you for Ohio State. Leave me some milk and cookies, ho ho ho.