Note from author: I don’t like football, I don’t understand it, and I don’t care about it. So who better than I to write about the last regular season game? This is my account of the home football game on 10/25 against Rio Mesa as I perceived it. All views, sentiments, and opinions are mine and mine alone and are not shared by the Courier nor any faculty at Calabasas High.
Friday, October 25th, 6:56PM.
I’m late.
The game starts at 7:00 and it’s about a fifteen minute drive…it’s fine. Nothing happens in the first fifteen anyway. A very close person to me, we’ll call her Mallory, is getting an award or flowers or something for marching band senior night and I said I’d be there to see it.
The ceremonies are after the game, right? I decide to text her just to confirm and…no, it already happened…killer, terrific job Elliot.
Well whatever I only bailed on her on her last game of highschool.
7:05PM
Still not at the game. I’ve decided to run by CVS so that I can buy some type of sentimental candy for Mallory to make up for the whole missing her senior ceremony thing, but it took longer than I expected to find the damn Ring Pops and now I’m storming out of the CVS raving mad in my own mind about the ponzi-scheme-intricacies of self-checkout. Not only is it a beautiful piece of corporate self-interest disguised as convenience, but also why do they have a swipe or insert option if you can’t swipe. Just say it’s insert only.
7:20PM
Can I park in the senior lot?
Probably.
I’m sure it’s fine. Y’know, if I ever was gonna go on a breaking-into-cars binge I’d absolutely start here. No cameras, fancy cars, dark as sin. What more could you ask for?
7:30PM
I finally make it to the football field. It’s kind of dead, about half full (or half empty), and I’m standing on the stairs leading down to the pack. Some girls take a group photo that will no doubt be posted and reposted through a web of Instagram stories with little hearts and kissy captions like “OMG Luv u soo much @somerandofromCHS”. But in the back, under all the glitz and future nostalgia, is me, lurking. Cant’cha picture it? Like a monster movie, when all the campers take a picture by the fire and when they check it later they see a dark figure towering in the back.
Score is 14 – 8. Away.
7:40PM
Coyotes touchdown and the marching band plays “Land of a Thousand Dances”. I better get my pom-poms.
7:45PM
A girl brushes past me and with a ribbit of disgust, remarks, “Oh my god. Wait, this is so embarrassing, why are we here?” Always good to see school spirit is alive and well.
Some random dude daps me up. He has dark curly hair and is paler than me in February. We’ll call him Gabe.
7:51PM
And now a play-by-play breakdown by some muscle bound dude-bros in the crowd:
Dudebro 1: “LETS GO!”
Dudebro 2: “LETS GO!”
Dudebro1: “OH MY GOD!”
Dudebro2: “OH MY GOD!”
Wonderful job gentlemen. It’s like Howard Cosell has returned from the grave.
7:56PM
Some ASB guy just messed up the confetti thing and burned his hand. That was kinda cool I guess.
8:02PM
A girl stops me in my tracks, and like a hungry dog she barks “Do you have any weed? Any Nic? Any Pills. Anything?! I need anything!”
“Football sucks that bad?” I ask her.
“That bad,” she assures.
8:14PM
Cue the sea of seniors.
Cheerleaders, dancers, then Hip Hop. They all walk out with their parents, siblings, or extended family. There was a rumor that somebody was going to show their personal Fresian horse. Unfortunately for everyone, it never happened.
Then the marching band starts off the halftime show by grooving a little number to a semi-rude scattered applause. Then Hip Hop hips and hops and everyone goes wild. Dance comes out, as does Pom Pom and my ears start to bleed from a blaring, blown out, trap remix of “Please Don’t Stop the Music”. What is “Pom Pom”? How is it different from cheerleading? I guess because they’re not cheering anything. But then how is it different from dance? I guess because they have pom poms. Well look at that, I’ve learned something.
I sit at the top of the bleachers and see a little blinking light sputtering in the wind above the field. Is it the communists? Aliens? How cool would it be if it was aliens, and they abducted us all. Although, there is something a little distressing and depressing in imagining that some other form of intergalactic intelligence finally makes it to earth, and their first contact with our species is in Calabasas. Plastic surgery disasters, gold chains, and extreme self absorption only balanced by heavy portions of lean. I have no doubt in my mind that the aliens would return us all out of disaffection or eject us out into icy space out of aggravation. But hey, at least it’d be an interesting story for the paper, maybe somebody would actually read it.
Unfortunately it turned out just to be a dumb little drone. Some old guy on the next bleacher screams out “IF YOU GOT A GUN I’LL SHOOT EM DOWN!”
Halftime score 23- 22. Home.
8:50PM
I’ve lost track of what’s happening. I think the Dodgers won the first game of the World Series. The Coyotes scored at some point but I wasn’t watching, I was wandering around in the dark listening to music. I have to come up with something to write about. There has to be something interesting to say. Then again, it is high school football.
A magnum flashlight beam hits me in the back of the head meaning my detour has come to its natural conclusion; being caught. Nick the security guard, the coolest security guard I’ve ever been escorted anywhere by, walks me back to the game, like a loose dog brought back to its yard.
9:10PM
It’s the beginning of the fourth and the Coyotes lead 29 – 28 with eight-and-half minutes left in the game. I’m leaning over the railing of the bleachers trying to watch the game with as much intent as I can muster this late in the stage.
Some blingy thirty-something male is standing next to me screaming at the top of his lungs about strategies, ref penalties, and “LOADING UP THE RIGHT SIDE!” He got so red he looked like he might have a hernia; but I wasn’t so lucky.
I see Mallory from a distance and try to mouth obscene things about Mr-I-peaked-in-highschool-and-still-come-to-the-football-games next to me but she can’t read my lips and doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Which is common and forgivable.
9:17PM
Did I just get hit on? Maybe.
Standing at the top of the pack when that pale guy from earlier-the one I called Gabe, remember him? Yeah well he’s standing on a bleacher opposite mine and he’s calling out to me. “She wants you!” He shouts. My eyes trail down his arm, his pointed finger, to the mousy haired brunette in a red hoodie sitting with her hands in her lap. Looking at the girl, with her mouth all clenched tight and her jittery glances, I can tell she’s embarrassed.
“Alright. . . Dope,” I say. To those of you flapping your angel wings and shaking your heads, what would’ve you preferred I say? Better yet, what would you say? Huh? What’s your answer? I’m sure it’s divine. Her friends threw her under the bus, I was put on the spot, I wasn’t interested but I didn’t have anything against the poor girl, I just wanted to end the interaction. I threw her a peace sign and went back to furiously scribbling notes.
Note: Stupid Cali kids shivering and shaking like chihuahuas in the 60 degree weather. The cheerleaders are cold and not as cheery, so that’s kind of fun.
9:25PM
Rio Mesa fumbles letting Calabasas recover the ball and charge down field for a touchdown. With a minute fifty-one left in the final quarter Coyotes lead with 36 – 28.
9:35PM
Although it was borderline impossible for Rio Mesa to come back in the remaining time, the Coyotes, actually acting aggressively for once, kept pushing, and scored another touchdown making the score 42 – 28.
While waiting on the game clock, I see Nick the security guard, so I go up to him and ask him for a quote. I ask him to summarize the game in a few words. He tells me:
“Unexpected, uncompromising, ultimate Coyote win.”
That’s probably the best, most respectable, most professional piece of writing in this whole article, so thank you very much Nick.
9:40PM
Buzzer. Game over. That’s it, I can go home.
Rio Mesa scored another touchdown but it didn’t matter. Calabasas came out victorious with a final score of 43 – 34.
No time to celebrate though, as I get caught up in the racket of marching band’s tear-down. Within a few blinks I’m pushing a cart of music stands down the hill, then carrying a set of marching tenor drums into the bandroom. Once I get in there I see Mallory climbing up a shelving unit and she calls me over to her. She tells me to hand her the tenors so she can put them up on the top shelf. Once she’s up there I hold my arms out in case she falls, cause that’s full proof. A flailing seventeen year old falling off a twenty-foot pallet shelf holding 4/5th of a drum kit…what do you mean I wouldn’t be able to catch her? At the very least I was trying to help.
Luckily, it all went fine, I helped her down and for my labor I was compensated with a chocolate chip cookie, a few ribbons that I will never use for anything, and a whole gluten free pizza. Gluten free is kind of a bummer because I’m not but still, as a jobless adolescent a free pizza is a pretty good deal.
Me, Mallory, and a few others walk out into the parking lot. I ask Mallory if she’s sad that her last game (we didn’t think the Coyotes would win the first playoff game) is over. She says she isn’t and I believe her. We start drifting, but as I walk away and she makes it over to her ride I remember; the ring pop. It’s been my jacket since I got here. I turn around, holler her name and whip it at her. I miss her completely and she awkwardly picks it up off the ground, but still I see her smile.
10:07PM
Sitting alone in my car in the mostly empty parking lot with my cold pizza and ribbons.
Nobody watches the game. Kids go to meet up with their friends and eat popcorn or do drugs in the bathroom, or wander around school after dark, or sit with their girlfriend or boyfriends, or gab about a football player or hit on a cheerleader. Everyone wants to have fond memories from highschool and while it feels lame while you’re in it, after a twenty-year glaze of nostalgia it’ll certainly serve as a nice snapshot in your memory.
Furthermore, it’s one of the most documented and idealized things in American pop culture, spanning every decade and region. Whether it’s Friday Night Lights, All-American or the last shot of the Breakfast Club, no matter the context of the movie or show, everybody who’s ever gone to school can find some sense of kinship in the football scenes. Whether that means they remember hating it, loving it, wishing they’d gone more or wishing they’d gone less, everyone can relate. And I think everybody looks for something to relate to, just as everybody needs something to be nostalgic about.
Ultimately the experience of ‘going to a football game’ has nothing to do with football, and everything to do with going.
Speaking of which, I can’t seem to get it out of my head what had just happened. After I threw Mallory the Ring Pop she said something, but I didn’t catch it because I wasn’t listening. But I probably should’ve; I still wonder what she said.
I turn on the car and, having not turned down the stereo when I parked, my brain is blitzed by Roxy Music’s self-titled debut.
The album picks up on the third track “If There Is Something”, a weird piece of piano and bass heavy glam with an R&B song structure and complete stranger synth pieces. I pull out of the parking lot, not knowing at all how I’m gonna compile all my notes into something readable but knowing full well I’m gonna put it off for as long as possible, as Bryan Ferry’s shaking, heartbroken, alien voice pleads through the speakers:
I would do anything for you
I would climb mountains
I would swim all the oceans blue
I would walk a thousand miles
Reveal my secrets
More than enough for me to share
I would put roses ‘round our door
Sit in the garden
Growing potatoes by the score
Shake your head, girl, with your ponytail
Take me right back
