South Louisiana's Other Denomination

Back in November, my girls attended their first LSU football game and in my Facebook post, I joked that it could be deemed child neglect around here.  A friend put it better and said they were culturally disadvantaged.

Game day begins by finding sufficient purple and gold attire and then leaving the house at 10am.  And it is an all day affair for this particular 2:30pm afternoon kickoff.  Tailgating is a sporting event in it's own right here in South Louisiana.  There are generators running cooking devices with pots of gumbo, jambalaya, deep fried things and large flatscreen televisions.  And libations flow freely.  How fitting is the definition of libation for this occasion: the pouring of a liquid offering as a religious ritual.  

It occurred to me that my thought process of whether I needed to attend the games has evolved.

LSU Football is a religion in this area.  As a college coed, I remember the loneliness when I was not invited to go to a game and would be "left behind."  I was waiting for a guy to invite me, not forging ahead finding another group to go with, yet, maybe in hindsight, I really didn't want to go?  

I remember when George and I moved back to Baton Rouge in 2000, I felt like I was supposed to go to the games.  Some people live their lives around going to these games and many of them are our peers.  And I thought I was supposed to as well.  


But perhaps there was reason that I did not work so hard to find other means to go to the game.  As Garfield the cat would say, "It is a big fat hairy deal":  Securing tickets ($), a sitter if the kids are young ($) , finding a tailgate ($), a parking spot ($)  and then sitting and watching football for 3 hours.  

Really?!! 

 Do I want to spend three hours watching football? I am a two time alumni of the university.  I love LSU.  Yet it is painstaking for me to sit and watch a football game for that long.  We were given advice to bring lots of cash to keep the kids entertained by the concession stand.  I was grateful that Mallory wanted to get up and down 6 times during the first half because I couldn't sit there that long either.  I was entertained by the sign in the bathroom!  Here is the picture from it -----

I loved bringing the girls and seeing all of the commotion though.  Ninety thousand of your best friends decked out in purple and gold.  Waiting behind the barricade to see the football team walk down Victory Hill.  Accidentally stopping at the prime spot to see the cheerleaders do their bit.  And then the drum major and Golden Girls as well.  And then the "piece de resistance" as the band marched by and played the Pregame, my absolute favorite.

I get chills each and everytime I hear the Golden Band from Tiger Land play the Pregame song.

Even though I love hearing that Golden Band play, I still walk to the beat of a different drum most of the time and that is O-Kay.  I don't have to waste any more time thinking I'm supposed to be somewhere because other people are.  We came and enjoyed the festivities and half of a game (!) and I don't feel the desire to do it again for quite some time and that is O-Kay.  The funny thing about evolving, I didn't realize I had stopped shaming myself about not going until we went to a game.

Don't know you are there, until you are there!

Listen closely and you can hear Mallory finding her loose tooth, figuring out the spelling of the band and me yelling.  We were way up high.  Riley and George had tickets across the stadium lower down.