along the trail to fame and glory

It was a night of firsts. I went to my first BYU sporting event last weekend, the shocking part of that announcement being that I've been here for 3 years. I'm a junior, and I had been to nothing, so when M-High called me up and asked if I wanted to go to the men's volleyball game I said yes. We walked over together and upon arrival I informed her that I expected the works - I wanted "the overpriced hot dog, the snack foods bigger than my head, everything! The sky's the limit! "

"Okay, but either way, you're paying for it."
"What? You asked me, remember? I can't believe you expect me to go dutch on this!"

We got good seats in the blue chairs (I insisted because the benches hurt my back so much) and headed off to the concessions stand, where we discovered, get this, only reasonably priced concessions*. I was shocked. Anywhere else would have charged upwards of seven dollars for a hot dog, and BYU had the nerve to charge only $2.50. This definitely threw my plans for a loop and resulted in me buying a lot of food -namely nachos, a tub of popcorn bigger than my head, and a flavor pop, which is seven times bigger than an otter pop and not nearly as tasty.

The game was good -very exciting stuff, this volleyball. Except that when BYU won a game everyone stood up all of the sudden and I had no idea what was going on. I hurriedly emptied my lap of the popcorn, the nachos, and the flavor pop and stood up to find that everyone was singing the fight song. I was aware we had one, I'd just never heard it before, and even with the words displayed on a giant screen I had no idea what tune I was supposed to be singing it to. And when it got to the end, it turned out to not be the end, because there was a whole Ra Ra Ra-Ra-Ra bit that I didn't know was coming. My fist/air pumping was sporadic to say the least. Stupid ra ra ra. I did much better the second time around, and by the time we won the last game I was a seasoned pro. Not enough to be able to tell you now what the words are to the fight song, but enough that I can do that air punching thing without looking like I'm having a heart attack.

Other firsts from that evening -

(1) I considered tossing a nectarine pit down the collar of a semi-acquaintance sitting one row in front of me and three seats down. I restrained myself.

(2) I tried flossing my teeth with a granola bar wrapper. Eating popcorn always leaves those pesky brown thinguses in my teeth, and my fingernails aren't long enough to get them out. I even propositioned M-High by gesturing to my open mouth and saying, "You've got nice long nails, would you mind?" She did, in fact, mind.

I consider the whole evening to have been an absolute triumph.


*Every time I hear the word concessions I get it confused with the word indulgences, so when the billboard at the movies says "Impress your date, buy concessions" I think of some sort of catholic market for paying off past sins going on behind the popcorn counter