My husband and I had tickets to the Jaguars game, and for a few, ridiculously brain-dead minutes we actually contemplated dragging our kids along with us. This would have been a terrible idea for many reasons, including the fact that they would have come home deaf, sunburned and smelling of beer. But for some reason the cost of a ticket for a forty-two-year-old man who follows the Jaguars like a hippie following The Grateful Dead is the same as one for a nine-month-old who doesn't know the difference between a football and a bologna sandwich.
So the kids stayed with my mother-in-law. And Jeff and I were free. At last.
And for someone who equates a solo trip to the grocery store to a weekend in the Bahamas, I was THRILLED to go to a football game with just my husband. Sure it was a hundred degrees out. Sure we'd be sitting next to Jeff's boss and surrounded by shirtless drunk guys screamingDe-Fense! De-Fense! Sure I don't even really like the Jaguars (I mean really, is there anything other team in the NFL with less of an identity? Our colors are Teal and Black for God's sake...to me those colors embody making a friendship bracelet while watching Saved By The Bell on Saturday morning). But man, I was PSYCHED to be out of the house, away from my children and nestled in a hard, plastic, teal-colored seat for Three Whole Hours. Drinking Beer. Awesome.
The first thing I noticed being without children was the ease with which we got out of the car and walked across the parking lot. No diaper bags to haul around. No strollers to lug from the trunk. No car seats to mess with or Baby Bjorns to put on or sunscreen to slather onto squirming bodies. We just hopped out of the car and walked, unencumbered, to the stadium. It felt so weird.
And we were able to stand in line to buy food without trying to decide if it would be a giant waste of money to buy Rollie his own hotdog, because he would either a.) not even take one bite, or b.) take one bit and drop the rest. The only thing that reminded me that we even hadkids was that I couldn't stop doing the Mom Rock as we waited. If you have kids, you know what I mean. Even when I'm not holding a baby, I still do the Mom Rock. It's so freaking annoying. And I know it will never stop because my mother STILL does the Mom Rock, and she hasn't had a baby in 25 years.
Also, I found myself almost asking my husband if he had to go potty before we went to sit in our seats. It's a hard habit to break.
Anyway, we sat and drank beer and watched the game, but mostly we basked in each other's company for two hours and forty minutes (I mean, as much as a couple can bask in each other's company over the screams of rabid, drunk football fans, angry that the Jags were playing like crap...also, I think the heavy-set man with the oversized headphones beside me was trying to sort of hit on me...he kept offering me his drink holder, but because it meant I would have come pretty close to his big hairy leg to set down my beer, I held it the entire game....). Still, it was so nice to be alone with my husband and sixty thousand other people. It almost made me wish we had season tickets. Almost.
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