Imagine if you can:
It's eight-thirty on a cool Athens morning, with the temperature resting calmly at seventy-five degrees. In some towns, most folks are drinking their morning tea or coffee; children are settling in for their Saturday viewing of "Rug Rats," "The Wiggles," or even that pervert, "Barney"; college students are rolling over in their beds (or in the person's with whom they left the bar with the evening before); and everyone's Saturday is slowly, but surely beginning to unfold. Now let us shift the camera back toward our cool seventy-five degree town in Athens, GA where the aforementioned most folks aren't Georgia Bulldog fans.
It's eight-thirty on a cool Athens morning, with the temperature resting calmly at seventy-five degrees. If you head east on Broad Street with the windows down, the quiet morning of Saturday seems to have "left the building." Do you remember the phrase, painting the town red? Let me just state for the record: understatement. On each side of the road (beginning at least fifteen miles from the campus football stadium) there are tents. Red tents. There are red tents, huge red and black Ford trucks, old 1960's red and black busses taking up lawn space in every other chicken wing parking lot, and fifteen to twenty people filling each tent, bus, and Ford in all of those parking lots—the whole fifteen miles to campus.
It's now 10:30 in the morning. I drive my car (with the Florida GATOR tag on the license plate thanks to my Florida GATOR mommy) slowly up to campus to search out a parking space so my new friend from NYC and I (neither of us ever having been to a Georgia game) can tailgate with some other graduate students before the kick-off at 1:00pm. I'm thinking 10:30 is pretty early, but I know now that these tents, trucks, and busses have been there since 7:00am to make sure they have the perfect spot for their five hours of ...camaraderie before the game. To my left and to my right, all I can see is red and black: red and black hats, pants, shirts, pom-poms, car flags, flip-flops, pumps, and dresses --oh, the dresses.
If you think back to one of my emails about a month ago, you will recall my description of the college students' fashion these days. Now imagine that fashion painted-no, saturated-in red and black (albeit, white is obviously accenting those two dominant colors, making the outfit complete). I don't know if any of you are aware of it, but polka dots are back! And I don't know if I've ever seen so many polka dots in one place. Now, I don't know how it is at other college football games, but Georgia girls dress-up for the games. And honey, I don't mean they put on mascara and lipstick; I mean they put on their "Sunday best" for the "Saturday game."Strapless polka dot dresses, halter polka dot dresses, tank polka dot dresses, and if you can believe it,
t-shirt/jersey polka dot dresses,but wait, there's more...
Each and every one of these dresses, no matter if they came with them or not, was accented by the one and only, big, thick high-wasted 80s belt! It was the MOST amazing thing I've ever seen! Oh, and chunky round necklaces and bracelets (red) to accompany the enormous (red) 80s-style plastic earrings.
So there I am: tank-top (black), Patagonia shorts that are at least ten years old, Chacos, hair in braids, and my RED Georgia Bulldogs baseball hat fittin' right ol' in! Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Dawgs! Sick 'em huugghg, hugghghg, huuughghg! (That's the cheer)
I have to say the best part of my first Georgia Bulldogs game as a student was half time. Drunk nineteen-year-old comes slowly staggering up the stairs (and we're wayyy on up there in the student section) with her sistahs helpin' her up the stairs, to join their other polka-dotted friends, take some pictures on their cell phones and sneak some more Jack Daniels from their plastic bags, which they have hidden in their cleavage. Sistah is not makin' it up the stairs with the ease and grace that we Southern sorority girls like to see. Her eyes are glazed over and almost crossed because she's been slipped one too many polka dots, and here she comes, in all her glory. Her friends sit/set/place/unload her down and turn quickly to talk behind her back (like all good friends do, don't we, girls?); sistah looks around to see if any one of the hundreds of people will see what she's about to do, I imagine, and then gently brushes her polka dotted sash that's smoothing her hair back to the side and lets it all out. That girl threw up so hard and so fast that I thought it might lift her off her seat!..We moved -to say the least.
And here I sit at 9:00 on a Saturday night typing away and watching the Gator/Tennessee game, recognizing this as a conscious choice. I realized that after the game, those polka-dotted cuties were going to do the best they could to drink on into the night and it probably wouldn't have been that pretty and we who are here for different reasons, would get in our cars to go home (sober) and continue our readings for the week. Well, actually, I had to CLEAN OFF my car before I got into it because it had been rolled. Oh yes, rolled with toilet paper from the portable bathroom that I parked by so everyone who went in to use it saw my beautiful GATOR tag. Oh well, at least it was just toilet paper --and it was clean--and there were no key marks on my Florida Gator car. If that's the best the drunk Bulldog fans could do, good for them.
I wonder what other people are doing tonight in other towns, because I know that everyone in this town is either at home or at a bar watching this same game that I'm watching to see how we'll do when our Bulldogs play these two teams in the weeks to come. More to come with each new adventure. stay tuned.I'm off to buy some dots--polka, that is.
It's eight-thirty on a cool Athens morning, with the temperature resting calmly at seventy-five degrees. In some towns, most folks are drinking their morning tea or coffee; children are settling in for their Saturday viewing of "Rug Rats," "The Wiggles," or even that pervert, "Barney"; college students are rolling over in their beds (or in the person's with whom they left the bar with the evening before); and everyone's Saturday is slowly, but surely beginning to unfold. Now let us shift the camera back toward our cool seventy-five degree town in Athens, GA where the aforementioned most folks aren't Georgia Bulldog fans.
It's eight-thirty on a cool Athens morning, with the temperature resting calmly at seventy-five degrees. If you head east on Broad Street with the windows down, the quiet morning of Saturday seems to have "left the building." Do you remember the phrase, painting the town red? Let me just state for the record: understatement. On each side of the road (beginning at least fifteen miles from the campus football stadium) there are tents. Red tents. There are red tents, huge red and black Ford trucks, old 1960's red and black busses taking up lawn space in every other chicken wing parking lot, and fifteen to twenty people filling each tent, bus, and Ford in all of those parking lots—the whole fifteen miles to campus.
It's now 10:30 in the morning. I drive my car (with the Florida GATOR tag on the license plate thanks to my Florida GATOR mommy) slowly up to campus to search out a parking space so my new friend from NYC and I (neither of us ever having been to a Georgia game) can tailgate with some other graduate students before the kick-off at 1:00pm. I'm thinking 10:30 is pretty early, but I know now that these tents, trucks, and busses have been there since 7:00am to make sure they have the perfect spot for their five hours of ...camaraderie before the game. To my left and to my right, all I can see is red and black: red and black hats, pants, shirts, pom-poms, car flags, flip-flops, pumps, and dresses --oh, the dresses.
If you think back to one of my emails about a month ago, you will recall my description of the college students' fashion these days. Now imagine that fashion painted-no, saturated-in red and black (albeit, white is obviously accenting those two dominant colors, making the outfit complete). I don't know if any of you are aware of it, but polka dots are back! And I don't know if I've ever seen so many polka dots in one place. Now, I don't know how it is at other college football games, but Georgia girls dress-up for the games. And honey, I don't mean they put on mascara and lipstick; I mean they put on their "Sunday best" for the "Saturday game."Strapless polka dot dresses, halter polka dot dresses, tank polka dot dresses, and if you can believe it,
t-shirt/jersey polka dot dresses,but wait, there's more...
Each and every one of these dresses, no matter if they came with them or not, was accented by the one and only, big, thick high-wasted 80s belt! It was the MOST amazing thing I've ever seen! Oh, and chunky round necklaces and bracelets (red) to accompany the enormous (red) 80s-style plastic earrings.
So there I am: tank-top (black), Patagonia shorts that are at least ten years old, Chacos, hair in braids, and my RED Georgia Bulldogs baseball hat fittin' right ol' in! Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Dawgs! Sick 'em huugghg, hugghghg, huuughghg! (That's the cheer)
I have to say the best part of my first Georgia Bulldogs game as a student was half time. Drunk nineteen-year-old comes slowly staggering up the stairs (and we're wayyy on up there in the student section) with her sistahs helpin' her up the stairs, to join their other polka-dotted friends, take some pictures on their cell phones and sneak some more Jack Daniels from their plastic bags, which they have hidden in their cleavage. Sistah is not makin' it up the stairs with the ease and grace that we Southern sorority girls like to see. Her eyes are glazed over and almost crossed because she's been slipped one too many polka dots, and here she comes, in all her glory. Her friends sit/set/place/unload her down and turn quickly to talk behind her back (like all good friends do, don't we, girls?); sistah looks around to see if any one of the hundreds of people will see what she's about to do, I imagine, and then gently brushes her polka dotted sash that's smoothing her hair back to the side and lets it all out. That girl threw up so hard and so fast that I thought it might lift her off her seat!..We moved -to say the least.
And here I sit at 9:00 on a Saturday night typing away and watching the Gator/Tennessee game, recognizing this as a conscious choice. I realized that after the game, those polka-dotted cuties were going to do the best they could to drink on into the night and it probably wouldn't have been that pretty and we who are here for different reasons, would get in our cars to go home (sober) and continue our readings for the week. Well, actually, I had to CLEAN OFF my car before I got into it because it had been rolled. Oh yes, rolled with toilet paper from the portable bathroom that I parked by so everyone who went in to use it saw my beautiful GATOR tag. Oh well, at least it was just toilet paper --and it was clean--and there were no key marks on my Florida Gator car. If that's the best the drunk Bulldog fans could do, good for them.
I wonder what other people are doing tonight in other towns, because I know that everyone in this town is either at home or at a bar watching this same game that I'm watching to see how we'll do when our Bulldogs play these two teams in the weeks to come. More to come with each new adventure. stay tuned.I'm off to buy some dots--polka, that is.
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