Our First OU Football Game

Saturday was a monumental occasion. I took my children to their first OU Football game. As I've mentioned before, I have great memories of going to Sooner games as a child and I wanted to share that with my kids. It may have been a little early for them. They did really well during the game and made it through all four quarters, but most of the credit for that goes to their mom for packing a backpack full of paper, crayons, colored pencils, stickers, fans, snacks, etc. The football game didn't really keep their attention, although from what I've heard on the radio this week the other 84,000 people in attendance weren't all that impressed with what they saw on the field either.

When OU scored, fireworks shot off from the scoreboard which was both exciting and frightening for Clark, who sat in my lap most of the afternoon. He was funny. After the fireworks and the loud cheers from the fans he buried his head in my chest, but only for a few seconds at a time. The noise made him anxious, but then while still clinging to me, he would twist the top half of his body around to see what was happening on the field so that he wouldn't miss anything.

Ryleigh and Clark both got excited when the horses ran onto the field pulling the Sooner Schooner. Ryleigh got involved in kickoffs by saying "Ooooohhhhhh" and holding her index finger in the air with the rest of the crowd until the ball was kicked and then letting out a resounding "U!". Both OU and Tulsa's bands performed at halftime, which both of the kids enjoyed, but the highlight may have been towards the end of the game when the 9 year old boy behind us gave Ryleigh his souvenir red foam finger (on Ryleigh's hand in the picture above).

When I tell stories to Ryleigh at night (when I don't sing them) I try to come up with a story that relates somehow to what we have done recently. I had already told her plenty of OU football stories so I related a story about going to Kansas City with Brad, Jeff and my Dad to watch the Kansas City Royals baseball team play. Jeff maintains to this day that we would have made better time if we'd taken the Topaz, but that's a totally different story.

Anyway, as I was telling her the story I reminded Ryleigh that Andrea used to go to the Royals games with her dad. That fact led me to think, what if Andrea and I were both at that game watching the Royals and White Sox play. What if we bumped into each other at the concession stand. What if my future wife and I sat beside each other at a baseball game 20+ years ago. So I told Ryleigh that she better hang onto her ticket stub, because some day she and her husband might be talking about their childhood, and recalling a football game they went to with their parents:

Ryleigh - "I went to an OU game once with my dad."
Future husband - "I went to a game with my mom."
R - "We watched OU play Tulsa."
FH - "WE watched them play Tulsa, too."
R - "We sat in the south end zone."
FH - "WE sat it the south end zone!"
R - "Well, some nice boy game me a big, red foam finger."
FH - "I gave a nice girl my foam finger!"

You never know Ryleigh, that nice boy might be your husband some day, and you can prove when you met by keeping that ticket. Wouldn't that be something?
"Daaaaaad!"
Well I thought it was funny.