We Eat

There are a lot of sports I have a basic knowledge of, but whose intricacies completely escape me.  Football is on that list.  Top five, probably.

I blame my parents.  To this day, I have never watched a single football game with them.  They understand it even less than I do.  See, we grew up watching swimming and volleyball and gymnastics...you know, sports the Chinese can play. (shots fired)

I find football strangely fascinating.  But for the numbers, the helmeted players could be anyone.  There's some kind of battle formation whose cold, calculating logic is just beyond the reach of my brain.  They have commanders, too, and seargents.

I have always wondered if sports were a way for people to play at war.  War with their surroundings, war with their peers, war with with themselves.

So I took on the football spread for yearbook and went just last friday to take pictures at our first home game.  I've watched three years' worth of home games from the stands.  For three years I've found myself irrationally excited, because I'm sure my subconscious mind understands the game, though my conscious mind may dodder hopelessly around in circles.

But let me tell you this: watching from the stands is so, so different than it is walking up and down the sidelines, weaving in and out of players and other camera people, running this way and that.  There's this raw, primitive energy I hadn't expected.  Although I can see some of their faces peeping through the openings in their helmets, I don't recognize any of them.  Although I'd know them in the halls, in my classrooms, wandering around town, I didn't know them then.  They didn't look at me, or anybody else- they saw the team, they saw the field, and they saw the other players.

It was crazy.  I've never seen anything like it before.

They didn't even notice the crowd, although they fed off its energy.  When the other side scored touchdowns, groans rippled through their ranks.  When our side did, they celebrated as brothers, screaming, pumping their arms and jumping on each other.

Toward the end things got a little nasty for us, and the entire team breathed and held their breaths as one man.  They shared a single plateful of tension, of bundled nerves and expectation.

At some points, we gave up on taking pictures and simply stood and watched.  Watched the battle unfold and the blood spill.

Like I said, it was pretty crazy. 

I realize that if you don't go to my school, the title doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you.  I don't entirely understand it myself, so I'm not going to try to explain it.  It's pretty funny, though, to hear the crowd chant it like a prayer and make as though they're eating, holding imaginary plates and utensils.  Whoever knew the minds of teenagers? Freaking nobody.  Not even teenagers.