The first thing you hear at Cody's stadium on a Friday night is the drumline warming up behind the field house. The first thing Rosie does is try to clap along with a fistful of Goldfish in each hand.
My nephew Cody is a junior this year and plays offensive line for his high school in Garland, which means that from late August to November our Friday nights belong to a metal bleacher, a stroller, a cooler and three kids with very different ideas about how long a football game ought to last.
Getting there
Matt is home from the warehouse by 2:45, so on game days we have a little cushion. Kickoff is at 7:00 and the drive is about half an hour, so we leave at 5:45 and eat dinner in the parking lot with the back hatch of the van open. Kristen texts when she's saved seats, always the same section near the 35-yard line, up high enough that Rosie can see the band.
Tickets were $5 each for the four of us old enough to need one. Ryan stands down by the fence the whole game talking with the other dads. Avery is technically sitting with us and actually sitting with her friends two sections over. That's thirteen for you.
What's in the cooler
Dinner is the same most Fridays, because the whole point is not having to think about it:
- Turkey and cheese on Aldi rolls, ham for Matt, and one plain cheese sandwich for Eli, cut corner to corner in its own bag
- A family-size bag of chips and a sleeve of cookies
- Grapes in a zip bag (the glass containers stay home)
- Six bottles of water I freeze solid on Thursday night
- Wet washcloths in a zip bag, for sticky hands and hot faces
The frozen water bottles are the one thing I'd keep if I could only keep one. They're the ice packs on the drive, and by halftime they've melted into cold drinking water. After dinner the cooler stays in the van, and the bottles and washcloths ride into the stadium in the stroller basket.
Dinner for five comes to about $13 out of the grocery budget. At halftime each kid gets one thing from the booster club stand (nachos for Wyatt, popcorn for Eli, a lollipop Rosie mostly wears), which runs about $10 and goes on the restaurant line of the spreadsheet. I don't mind that money at all. It's part of the night, and it goes to the boosters.
How long three kids last
Wyatt would stay for double overtime in a thunderstorm. He watches Cody's number and nothing else, and he announces every block as if he's calling the game on the radio. You can't really follow a lineman unless you know which one he is, and Wyatt knows.
Eli asks if it's halftime yet about four minutes into the first quarter. He likes the band, he likes his popcorn, and he likes the walk to the bathroom more than anything that happens on the field. He is six. This is correct.
Rosie loves the first quarter with her whole body. She claps for the drumline, waves at strangers, and gets sticky in ways I can't fully explain. By the middle of the second quarter she's heavy-eyed in the stroller, and if we stay through the halftime show, she's asleep before the band leaves the field.
So we've settled on halftime. We watch the band, cheer on the way down the bleachers and are home by about 9:15 with one sleeping toddler and one boy narrating the first half to Biscuit, who listens with great patience. If the game is close, we stay through the third quarter, and Rosie sleeps through that too.
Why we keep going
It's hot, y'all. Last Friday it was 96 at kickoff, and the bleachers were still warm from the sun at eight o'clock. Fall in Dallas doesn't really arrive until October no matter what the calendar says. But Cody is the oldest grandkid on Matt's side, and the boys think he hung the moon. They wear his number on game days. They talk about him all week. Next year is his senior season, and I already know I'll be sad when it's over.
Tonight's sandwiches are made. Eli's is plain cheese, cut corner to corner, in a bag of its own.
