Rituals

Day 22 — 45,403 and counting

When I say that I like Friday night high school football in Texas, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.  I’m not some rabid, season-ticket holder, though I go to most home games (at least through halftime).  The only school shirt I own is a hand-me-down.  I’d mostly rather see the band than the football team (but then I was a band geek).  I don’t even have a kid in high school.  I am aggravated when the athletic boosters step over the line and make offensive statements in the giant spirit signs that line our main street on game day.  And I am indignant when the football players get advantages that other athletes and other disciplines do not enjoy.  That happens, almost every week.  

And yet.

There is something really marvelous about a high school football game in Texas.  Last night I went to a good one.  The air was crisp and just a little cool.  The wind chilled our noses.  The band played loud and proud even though they’ve already shifted most of their activities to concert work.  The stands were packed, the yells were loud, the air horn startled us every time.  A good slice of our town was there.  People who haven’t been to a single game all season came to this one.  At least one person who has never been to an American football game of any kind was there.  

Five teenage boys took leave of their senses to spend three hours in the chilled wind with no shirts and their bodies painted in the school colors, so that they could run up and down the sidelines with giant flags when we scored.  Girls in tiny skirts with glittery cheeks (and sweatpants, and turtlenecks, because they were smarter than those five boys in the paint) stacked themselves into impressive pyramids from which they tossed and caught the smallest of their number in stunts that I can only imagine their mothers find hard to watch.  It was so much fun.  And our team won, which made it even better.  They played well, they acted right, and they’re moving on in the playoffs.  It was a scene repeated all over Texas and the rest of the United States last night.  

I haven’t ever been able to find just the right words to explain why I enjoy a high school football game.  Then my kids led me to the right words.  

Tonight we were all sitting here in front of the computer, and I was doing random searches of whatever popped into their heads.  We searched speed stacking.  Ipswich lace (really it was Partner that threw that one out; he recently read this book—good idea, not a great ending).  Pseudonymous Bosch.  Treasure Island.  And hula.  Which led us to some You Tube videos of people doing hula.  The kids were really into the guys who do hula.  Which led us to a conversation about why people hula, and different styles.  Which led to a search of haka.  Which, beautifully enough, led us to this NPR story about the Trojans of Trinity High School, in Euless, Texas, of which, I’ll quote a smidge:

“The rituals are precisely defined:  There must be music and dancing, chanting and marching.  Sticks are twirled and thrown spinning into the night sky.  The tribe’s future — its strong, beautiful young men and women — paint their faces, don costumes and perform amazing feats of physical prowess for the pleasure and admiration of their people.”

And that refers to high school football, not the haka that the Trinity players perform before each game.  

Oh, and the Euless Trinity Trojans beat the Plano Wildcats 42-35 to advance to their next round of the playoffs as well.  We’re not in the same class, but maybe we’ll see them in Dallas in December.