They Might Not Actually Be Giants

Sunday was football Sunday. 

A football Sunday with friends and family.

A football Sunday full of snacks.

A football Sunday I, for once, didn't grumble because, as I mentioned Monday, I was in the action, 20 rows from the field, cheering on my team with wild abandon.

I've always wanted to describe my actions in this way.  And Lord know I act "with wild abandon" often enough....but that's neither here nor there.

After a mild (lightly put) Corey situation in the morning, I was on my way to Giants' Stadium with Kimberlie, my dad, our friend Wayne, a urinary tract infection, several pounds of deli meats, and cookies.  The essentials.  We only needed one pit stop on our two-and-a-half hour drive to New Jersey for potty break and corn dogs (this is not code...we really did need corn dogs) before arriving in a nearly full parking lot outside the stadium.

"Um, excuse me, could you pull your truck up?  You're taking up two spots."

"No can do.  See, we hafta put this in there and boobity-doo-doo and other such ramblings so we actually need both spots."

Wayne, shouting across three of us, through the window "You're being ruuuuuuude!"

Finally, after driving up and down aisle after aisle we found a spot taken by only a frat-party pole game.  This time Wayne decides to do the askin':

"Hey.  You need to...."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, I'll just move this."

"Uh, thanks."

And there we had our parking space.  Along a fence giving us about five feet beyond the car to spread out with a set of port-a-potties well within range.

"This is great!  Now let's unpack our deli meats!"

"And let's be sure to position ourselves close enough to the guys grilling 2lb burgers so that we can trick our taste buds into thinking our turkey subs with mayo are actually hamburgers."

I think I mentioned the ridicule in my tailgate meal selection on Monday.  It was brutal.

"Thank goodness we have these organic chips!!"

The one thing I didn't screw up:  the cookies.  We snuck them into the stadium under my sister's jacket.  They helped to nurse our wounds as we watched our team's constant defensive failures.

But would ya just look at that stadium...

It is breathtaking.  And awesome.  It feels like you are surrounded with walls made of people, which is a little weird, but cool.  There are four big-as-my-house TV screens that alternate between the game, replays and abrupt motivational sayings: "Get Up, Get Loud."  That's about as to the point as one can be.

My sister loved it...

My dad reeeeally loved it....

And then this happened...

The lights went out.  All of 'em.  And this is what we saw.

This is what we heard:

"OOOOOoooooYEEEeeeeaaaaaWOOOooooooAHHHhhhhh!!!" times eighty-thousand.

Then we saw this:

These are cell phones.  The dummies were trying to take pictures of the pitch black.  Puh-leez.

(I couldn't get mine out in time)

Do you believe me when I saw all the lights went out?  Because it sounds ridiculous, but fo real.  Eventually the emergency lights came on and we were told to stay in our seats and wait for evacuation instructions.  So we waited.  Then more lights came on.  We waited some more.  The refs decided there was enough light to play so they started the game back up.  Then we heard an announcement to stay in our seats and wait for evacuation instructions. 

"Uh, does he not know the lights and the game are back on??"

We eventually did evacuate, though.  A whole lot of us just got up and left when we realized our team stunk.  My group walked back to our car and drove off into the night.

But this time we skipped the corn dogs.