5.4 Place - Friday Night Lights

Bestest Friend and I are in the middle of a blog project. Each day of the month we will post a picture on a pre-determined theme and write a little something about it. The theme for the fourth day of each month is "Place."
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I have a little annual tradition in which I go back to my high school alma mater for the Homecoming football game, hang out with my besties from high school, and air clarinet to the fight song I must have played hundreds of times in my life.

This year the weather only sort of cooperated.

But we waved our pompoms, cheered madly on plays we didn't entirely understand, and got OHMYGOD excited when the exchange student, Nacho, took the Homecoming king prize.  We mocked the terribleness of the announcer, we laughed until tears, and we egged on Big Mike when he yelled at some high school students who were standing in front of us during the band's half-time performance.

I don't exactly have the happiest memories of this place. But I do have the happiest memories of the people I was surrounded by when I was there. When someone mentioned a name and I made a face, I didn't need to explain the face because everyone already knew exactly how I felt and what I was thinking.  When I asked if a teacher was still alive, no one questioned me because we all knew why we thought he would die early. When one of the Homecoming king candidates said he wanted to be Sully from Monsters, Inc. because Sully was strong, we all groaned as one unit. And all of that felt good.

Every year I claim I'm never doing it again. It's fucking cold. It RAINED this year. Getting there by the 7:00 kickoff is so hard because the traffic somewhere between Chicago and Grand Rapids always screws me up.   But you know what?  I'm totally doing this again next year.

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To see what Bestest Friend wrote about the theme of the day, check out her blog, Too Legit to Quit.