KELLY DAMIAN
That Friday night tradition
I
I find myself in the curious position of having married into a Tehachapi football family. My husband, his father and his grandfather were all Warriors. Aunt Cindy was the high school mascot, Cousin Monica, a cheerleader, and in 1957, Aunt Carol sat on the sidelines taking stats. At the Tehachapi-Garces game a few weeks ago, a dozen Damians spanning four generations were in the stands. There were zero Damians on the field. I say this is curious because if there were a yearbook category labeled “Least Likely to Marry the Captain of the Football Team,” you would see my face scowling back at you. To me, high school was something to be endured until moving on to “real” life. I was quick with a snarky comment about dumb jocks and exasperated by the hero worship surrounding the football players. So it is a new experience for me to see high school football freed from the lens of adolescent obnoxiousness. As an adult with children of my own, I can appreciate the challenge that faces those boys on the field. To know that you will feel pain, that you will fail in front of others, that you will push the limits of what your body is supposed to do and to go forward and do it anyway; that is admirable. And to understand that the team is more impor-
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tant than its individual parts, to work in coordination for the success of others, to be a part of something that is bigger than yourself; that is important. To listen to the roar of success but remain humble, and take in the silence of defeat but keep going, that is an experience that will do anyone well in life. Our world sometimes feels like it is splintering. There is so much that calls our attention: video games that drop the player into realistic battles, TV shows that let us follow around the rich and amoral, streaming video of panda bears, Twitter feeds from protestors. Our exponentially connected, audio-visual life can be satisfying mentally, but being social animals, sometimes we need to join the pack. Sitting out in the cold, between one guy in camouflage and another in a balloon hat, being blasted by air horns, feeling your buns freeze to the bleachers; this is a social network we will always need no matter how many 4-D effects are squeezed into the latest movie. In the stands, virtual reality means cringing when you see a player get hurt. My husband’s grandpa, Alfred, was an avid high school football fan. Even when he retired and moved to Arroyo Grande, he would drive his little red pick-up to the high school down the street to cheer for kids to whom he had no relation. Alfred is gone now, but my husband and his dad manage to get to a few football games every season. They sit under the lights installed by their family a generation ago, and watch the current generation knock helmets on the field, while the next rough houses behind the end zone. It is a reminder that they are a part of something bigger than themselves. Something that will continue when they, too, are gone.
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Bakersfield Life
January 2012
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