So I went to pick up some smokes at around nine AM to avoid the fine fresh fuckery that is game in the towns so blessed or cursed with a Big Ten School (though I think it’s at least twelve now). It’s a bit disturbing to see so many youngsters playing beer pong at nine AM. I don’t mean in the alcoholic sense, I just mean in the yucky tummy sense. When I was growing up this was a strictly residential neighborhood, it wasn’t coincidence. The town had laws to protect itself from slumlords and so it took a lot of wherewithal, patience and fortitude to rent a house in most of East Lansing and the student slums were clearly delineated.
I assume the economics changed. There are entire blocks on this six block residential street populated exclusively by students. There is a tradition whereby those not going to the game are mandated to drink on their front lawns and throw things at one another (like Frisbees and footballs, not snack dogs and cats or even iguanas which seem like they’d be fun to toss though I’m sure that never ends well for the iguana.) . One of the great traumas of my daughter’s childhood was that on a family vacation near Newport Oregon we all went to visit the then new aquarium and I bought my daughter a stuffed toy puffin. My brother and I had a puffin tossing contest a lot like the basketball game Horse. You had to call your puffin toss and if successful in your double reverse through the legs curve puffin toss the distaff brother had to repeat the throw.
Like many childhood traumas that don’t actually involve abuse, it was not pain so much as humiliation that stung. Spud figured it injured the dignity of the brightly colored proud stuffed puffin, and her cruel father and mean uncle only laughed harder at her protests. To be fair the rage of short child with dimpled baby fat is pretty dang adorable and hysterical and I’m not convinced stuffed puffins have any dignity, to phrase it in a fundamentalist fashion; If God had not intended the stuffed puffin to be chucked, hawked or tossed he wouldn’t have given them the perfect chucking balance.
It was not one of the better family vacations. That’s part of what made it so memorable. In general my father never quite knew what to do with himself in Oregon; he had a friend or two working at Reed College, which is sort of the standard by which he judged trips away from home. I think he knew some people at USC and UCLA. He doesn’t really have much of a sense of adventure. My mom does. In my mind the worst thing that ever happened on a family vacation was part of a much more adventurous trip. We went to Fenway to catch a Red Sox v. Tigers game. Everyone besides me and my girlfriend at the time were pissy at the top of the first and we left during the fifth despite my protests both emotional and rational (emotional; It’s Fenway! Those are my Tiggers! Rational; The SUV rental is five cars deep in stadium parking, those other cars will not be moved until the game is over).
It is sort of cool to have a team and a stadium in town though. The universities with century old teams are throwbacks to a time when college football was a real sport and professional football was a joke. MSU’s stadium holds, I believe, somewhere in the neighborhood of 85 thousand. U of M, I think, holds 105K and used to be, if not still is, the highest capacity of any football stadium in the world (American football, I assume there are larger soccer stadiums somewhere in the world).
It’s not so cool to be waiting in line behind children carrying their own weight in beer. I didn’t wait in line because I am the first among equals as far as QD customers go. The guy who was most stressed out followed me to the back cooler with the smart water and asked if I’d be needing a carton of smokes. Even if I hadn’t he had stress and loathing and that look of a man straddling the fence of suicide/homicide would have had me purchasing a sympathy carton. If meant he got to go in back into the secret, quiet locked room where the cartons were kept. He didn’t show back up until I came to the counter and he opened a heretofore closed register and took his time ringing me up so he could admit his own misery and suggest the manager’s dubious parentage and relative dangerous stupidity. Instead of have a nice day I said goodbye with something along the lines of ‘May you find peace’ or ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for’ he nodded his gratitude with a twinge of resignation and grim determination.
I’m sure the QD theists have a special prayer for the peach befuzzed children buying cases of Bud the-fuck Light. I believe it’s against the law in European countries with rich brewski traditions to serve bud light. I’m serious. There is nothing as near encouraging to me in the current state of union as the national trend towards microbrews. I assume, however, that’s not what’s been drank on the front lawns of this neighborhood. It’s damn near sacrilegious to drink good beer from a bright green plastic cup.
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