Go, Tigers, Go

When I was in college, I dated a guy who had played football in high school and college and because I wanted to understand the sport better, I asked my Dad to explain it to me one day.  I remember the conversation, where I plopped down on the couch while Dad was watching some college game and I said, "Can you explain football to me?" and Dad laughed and said, "Are you serious?"  He assumed that my stance, as it had been growing up, was that sports were generally uninteresting and that I couldn't care less about them.  He was surprised when I said, "Yes," and listened to and asked questions about the rules of football for the next half hour and then watched the game through to the end of the 4th quarter.  (The crazy things we do for love, right?)

Even though I broke up with that college football player (for good reason), I still enjoy football, and so now that it is fall, Evie gets to join me, Granna, Grannadaddy, and Daddy when he can for all the Memphis Tigers football games.  Evie is much more patient at the age of 4 than I was until age 19 when it comes to sitting through a football game.  She likes to see Tom III, the live animal tiger mascot, before the game.  We get a hotdog and sweet tea about half way into the 1st quarter.  She likes watching the fireworks shoot off whenever we score, and singing along to fight song.  She gets a whole cotton candy cone to herself, shakes her pompom, climbs in laps and on benches, and generally has a good time.  This week we got there with plenty of time to meet Pouncer, the costumed mascot, and play by the fountain.

They were giving away free adult sized hats, to which Evie took a liking.

Language funnies and memory amazements:

• Playing The Last Unicorn in the car, she says to me, "Mama, I can be the unicorn (who's surprised?) and you can be Shmedip."  "Who?"  "Shmedip?  The magicianer."  (She meant Schmendrick, which is a hard name to say, so fair enough.)
• I gave her a kiss in the morning after waking her up,  and she said, "Your kisses are just delightful."
• Talking about it being fall soon, she says, "I want it to be snow.  That way we can have snow cream." (She hasn't had snow cream nor have we talked about snow cream since February 2015 when it last snowed to such an extent that there was enough snow to make snow cream.  That's a year and seven months!)