Memoirs of a (sometimes) football fan

I did something the other evening which I hadn’t done in years. In fact, probably not since I’d graduated from high school.

I attended a high school football game. (Go Trojans!)

The last football game I attended in person was at my alma mater, the University of Oregon. (Go Ducks!) I didn’t go to a lot of games over my four years of college but from time to time I wandered across the Willamette River with my friends and we enjoyed rooting for our (then perpetually losing) team.

That was fun enough, but it’s a whole lot more fun to watch them winning these days on television. That way I can stay dry (it rains a lot in Eugene) and I can go to the bathroom without having to stand in line.

Back when I was in high school I didn’t attend too many games, either. I actually have some pretty good reasons for this. For one, I attended three different high schools, due to my father’s job.

I do remember going to one or two football games my 9th grade year at my school on Orcas Island, Washington. Forget about Friday Night Lights, our games were always played on Saturdays because the opposing teams had to take a ferry to get there and that added a huge amount of time to their traveling schedule. (Go Vikings!)

The next year I lived in Bend, Oregon, and there at Mountain View High School I attended just one game. I didn’t know very many people, and going to football games alone is no fun. (Go Cougars!)

Then I moved to West Berlin, Germany, and I was there for my last two years of high school. There, at Berlin American High School, I attended a handful of games (Go Bears!) but my best friend was the school mascot – which meant that she got to run around in a bear suit for the entire game – so I didn’t have her to sit next to and my other friends weren’t really into football so mostly I stayed home on Saturday afternoons. Yes, the games were on Saturdays there, too, also due to travel issues. It was kinda a big deal getting to and from West Berlin.

So all in all, being at any kind of football game was an anomaly for me. I do remember, way back in third grade, briefly considering becoming a football fan simply to improve my math scores. All the boys were really good at their 7 times tables whereas I hated and despised the 7 times tables and I knew that somehow their talent was involved with football scores.

I don’t really understand the sport of football. Ok…I don’t understand it at all other than I know that a First Down is a good thing and that field goals are sometimes worth one point and sometimes worth three, depending on if they’re accompanied by touchdowns or not. And I know that to get a touchdown the guy with the ball has to cross the end line without dropping the ball and somehow Mary, the Mother of Jesus is often involved.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’ve never attended a game here in Worthington prior to this year, but there it is. And the truth is, I enjoyed myself.

Does that mean I’ll be going to a lot more games from here on out?

Let’s not get crazy here. I mean, I enjoy hearing my son play tuba in the pep band, but I can only take so much sitting in the cold cheering for the home team before I zone out and begin wondering why some of the players have long black socks and some of the players don’t and wouldn’t they all be more aesthetically pleasing if they all matched and do they need to hire a fashion consultant to take care of this problem?

Apparently the snappy uniforms of the Oregon Ducks have rubbed off on me.

(Incidentally, I’m a little worried about the Ducks this year, what with losing Marcus Mariota and all. And even I know, deep down, that snappy uniforms or no, it takes more than that to win a football game.)

And to that I say: Happy Homecoming, Worthington!

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The Last Time I Went to a Bible Study

The last time I went to a Bible study at my church I felt safe. I harbored no fear that a dangerous person would walk in. No fears that he would bring a gun with him. No fears that he would use it.

The last time I went to a Bible study at my church I sat down, opened my Bible, and knew exactly what to expect: that we’d spend the next hour talking about the Bible. Surprise! We’d read passages, look up corresponding verses. Maybe I’d write down a few lines about what I was thinking. Maybe, if it was a particularly heart-searching lesson, I’d even underline a verse with red pen. Wild and crazy times, I know.

The last time I went to a Bible study at my church I was distracted. By the last words I said to my children before leaving the house. By my shoes. By the taste of coffee in my mouth. By what I needed to do after the study was done.

The last time I went to a Bible study at my church I couldn’t remember if I had prepared my lesson beforehand and then I remembered I hadn’t and I felt a little guilty about that but then I figured that God loved me anyway so I shouldn’t let it bother me even though it did.

The last time I went to a Bible study at my church I had no thought of racial tensions outside of the building. Or even in the building, for that matter. I didn’t think once about my white Scottish ancestors or my German blood on my father’s side or the little smattering of Swedish that my children inherited from their dad. I didn’t think about what any of that meant to my life, my plans, my family. I didn’t think about entitlement or racial profiling or people who might judge me by the color of my skin rather than the content of my character.

The last time I went to a Bible study at my church I didn’t think, in other words, about anything very important. Because, after all, I was attending Bible study, for goodness sake! A nice, pleasant, uncontroversial, calm, understood, safe, place.

Safe.

For me. A white woman in middle America. Who, when she goes to Bible study, does not need to worry about being shot. I’m not saying that I want to worry about that. I’m saying that it’s horribly, terribly wrong that anyone should need to worry about it.

We live in a messed up world. And it’s not getting better; it’s getting worse. I want everyone, everywhere, to be able to go to Bible study and not worry about anything worse than what they’re going to fix for dinner when they leave. That’s what I want. But that’s not reality. And I don’t think that anything short of Jesus coming back is going to change that.

Is that fatalistic? Possibly. All I know is that there are millions of people out there who are helpless in light of the few fanatics who set out to do horrible things – like shooting up a Bible study in South Carolina – leaving millions of innocent people afraid of what will happen the next time they go to a Bible study, or to school, or to work, or to the grocery store, or step out of their front door.

That is not what America is supposed to be.

The next time I go to a Bible study at my church I’m going to pray. Because, in all honesty, that’s the only solution I see to this horrible problem.