Last night after I read today’s blog dare topic - Fall Memory from High School - two vivid sequences played in my mind, both at high school football games though they were years and three thousand miles apart.
The first one took place in Fall, 1976 when I was a freshman
in high school. It was the last football game I would attend as a student at
Glen Ridge High School in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. We were playing our arch rival who we had
beaten a lot in the past, but this season was different. Five of our football
players had died in car accidents the Summer before, so it wiped out players
and morale simultaneously.
I remember after half time, seeing the team gathering outside the field. I could feel them work to muster up the strength to play this final half game of the season.
I was sipping hot chocolate and my breath came off in smokey puffs from the cold weather.
That moment lasted forever, in fact is still alive now, though it was probably less than sixty seconds long.
In Fall 1979 I was a senior at Dana Hills High School in
Dana Point, California. I have no idea who
we were playing because I didn’t
care about our lousy football team which rarely won a game. The beach folks at Dana Hills don't have a single creative commons photo available so instead, I am posting a photo of our cross country track team. Anyway, I went to the games
to socialize. On this night, I was flirting with a boy with curly blonde hair.
I think he was a friend of a friend. I was due to graduate early, I was working
at a job I loved, I was finally feeling comfortable in my skin.
For some reason the blonde haired boy whose name is lost in memory and I found something ridiculously funny to laugh about and we sat on the bleachers and laughed and laughed and laughed and it was, all of a sudden, like we were in an invisible bubble and no one else was there.
You might think this moment would end with the cliché high school kiss or something, but it didn’t.
Instead it just ended with laughter and the bubble going away but me, feeling almost overwhelmingly content in that moment. There were no expectations, no explanations, no possible heartbreak, no reason to be afraid, no awareness of what was to become of my life. I was no one’s sister, no one’s mother, no one’s best friend, no one’s babysitter, no one’s student… for that bubble moment I was just me and that blonde boy laughing.
When I came back to the world that joy of nothingness and everythingness continued. Last night, it showed itself to me again. Even now I am smiling about it.
And to think I wondered recently why I still love high school football so much.
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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott
This was inspired by a prompt from The Blog Dare from Mommy Blogs. 365 Days of Blog Prompts and Blog Writing.
Watch challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing
Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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