AC STL!!
Collette awoke from a dream at 4:11 that morning, in which she found herself a part of a Shakespeare production, principally orchestrated by Carrie-Bri, involving a number of the old families growing up. Collette was to play Ophelia, much to her surprise. And her first lines of the play were to be, “Colors? What colors?”
Over at the Silverspoon’s that morning… where there was bacon and banana chips for breakfast. Puck chomped them down as he drove around his red tricycle in a mad dash, waiting for his Papa, Nana, and Uncle Izzy to return.
This was followed by him giggling in happiness as he torpedoed his drinking water down the stair rail toward his Mama. Great game for a tike…
And Collette glanced through Gloria’s yearbook from 1969. Interestingly, she realized from Gloria’s photograph, that she could very well have had some sort of ethnic background: Pacific Islander, Native American, etc.
Then for lunch… as everyone slowly returned from their respective visitations of the morning… wherein Theodore had purchased a bunch of velvety red roses for Gloria… there was beef soup with sour cream for OLeif and Theodore, and cold grapefruit sparkling water.
And Puck discussed the balloons of the previous evening.
“There was hot fire in them,” he said. “So I couldn’t go inside. If they had been cold fire, I would go in them.”
Later, while Theodore and OLeif napped, there were caramel apples as Gloria relayed details of the upcoming 2011 graduation.
And when Collette instructed Puck to wake up his daddy, Puck did so, returning shortly later with a progress report…
“Daddy’s eyes start to open.”
By 4:45, they departed to drop off Collette at the house, where Linnea had been gone all day to an AHG planning meeting and Mandarin’s birthday party… whose mother was, as Collette had only just discovered, half-Native American, and half Irish…
So… it was game night!
Mom, Collette, Carrie-Bri, Joe (in place of Linnea, who was sadly missing said game), and Rose, headed out at five o’clock, after a stop by the mall to pick up Carrie’s red silk and beaded sunnies case at the ‘hippie store’ that sold cinnamon incense, Venetian masquerade masks, salt lamps, and hematite rings…
And then to the Anheuser Busch Convention Center!
It seemed like a promising game. As they took their seats on the bleachers with game fair, Joe examined the radar on his iPhone.
“Looks like we’re going to get hit,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of hours though, looks like.”
But no one really seemed to be paying attention to the possibilities of rain, as the gold sun slipped off, the moon was hazed over in mist, and the countdown brought out the players of the green and yellow to the field.
As the kickoff commenced… to their left was a young boys’ soccer team, waving their shirts around in the air, and smashing their cleats on the bleachers. To their right was the obnoxiousness of the St. Louligans reciting chants that would strike cold the heart of any Texan.
“This is the most rowdy bunch I have ever seen!” Mom shouted over to them, laughing.
“Oh, Mom…” Carrie replied. “You haven’t been to a South American football game. Let me put it this way. Lindenwood is a dry campus. When I was there for their games, there were people falling off the bleachers.”
It was a riot of noise! Yet somehow, without it, the game would not quite have been a game.
The green-and-yellows raced around the field, chanted on by their fan club and the drums and the vuvuzelas and the smoke machines and the screaming kids. Forty-five minutes of a clean game, except for the exclamations from the fan club… no score.
Halftime arrived. Collette and Rose took a walk around the park, watching over the bright lights and the 2,620 fans purchasing second-supper hot dogs, pretzels, nachos, and ice cream bars.
The air was still somber. Still on the touch of muggy, hanging silent over the astroturf of the low fields and the natural grass of the high field.
Back at the start of the second, Rose had the novel idea to stand at the fence, feet away from the game. It was a sensation. Forty-five minutes passed in a flash as first AC STL scored an impressive two-man assist, including Number 11, whose Italian name Carrie-Bri could not remember, and so she alternatingly called him ‘Fettucini’, ‘Alfredo’, and ‘Mussolini’. The crowds were wild. Overtime. Four minutes. In the 90th minute, Austin scored. Things were looking a little bleak. Then, in the very last moment… in rushed a 16 year-old kid, like a streak of lightening. His first goal. And the game was over, with the wild enthusiasm of the crowds!
They waited to slap high-fives with all the players, who, though looking exhausted, seemed happy that they were one step closer, hopefully, to the play-offs.
And as they walked off the field, great folds of lightening circumnavigated the west. Beautiful.
Over at the Silverspoon’s that morning… where there was bacon and banana chips for breakfast. Puck chomped them down as he drove around his red tricycle in a mad dash, waiting for his Papa, Nana, and Uncle Izzy to return.
This was followed by him giggling in happiness as he torpedoed his drinking water down the stair rail toward his Mama. Great game for a tike…
And Collette glanced through Gloria’s yearbook from 1969. Interestingly, she realized from Gloria’s photograph, that she could very well have had some sort of ethnic background: Pacific Islander, Native American, etc.
Then for lunch… as everyone slowly returned from their respective visitations of the morning… wherein Theodore had purchased a bunch of velvety red roses for Gloria… there was beef soup with sour cream for OLeif and Theodore, and cold grapefruit sparkling water.
And Puck discussed the balloons of the previous evening.
“There was hot fire in them,” he said. “So I couldn’t go inside. If they had been cold fire, I would go in them.”
Later, while Theodore and OLeif napped, there were caramel apples as Gloria relayed details of the upcoming 2011 graduation.
And when Collette instructed Puck to wake up his daddy, Puck did so, returning shortly later with a progress report…
“Daddy’s eyes start to open.”
By 4:45, they departed to drop off Collette at the house, where Linnea had been gone all day to an AHG planning meeting and Mandarin’s birthday party… whose mother was, as Collette had only just discovered, half-Native American, and half Irish…
So… it was game night!
Mom, Collette, Carrie-Bri, Joe (in place of Linnea, who was sadly missing said game), and Rose, headed out at five o’clock, after a stop by the mall to pick up Carrie’s red silk and beaded sunnies case at the ‘hippie store’ that sold cinnamon incense, Venetian masquerade masks, salt lamps, and hematite rings…
And then to the Anheuser Busch Convention Center!
It seemed like a promising game. As they took their seats on the bleachers with game fair, Joe examined the radar on his iPhone.
“Looks like we’re going to get hit,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of hours though, looks like.”
But no one really seemed to be paying attention to the possibilities of rain, as the gold sun slipped off, the moon was hazed over in mist, and the countdown brought out the players of the green and yellow to the field.
As the kickoff commenced… to their left was a young boys’ soccer team, waving their shirts around in the air, and smashing their cleats on the bleachers. To their right was the obnoxiousness of the St. Louligans reciting chants that would strike cold the heart of any Texan.
“This is the most rowdy bunch I have ever seen!” Mom shouted over to them, laughing.
“Oh, Mom…” Carrie replied. “You haven’t been to a South American football game. Let me put it this way. Lindenwood is a dry campus. When I was there for their games, there were people falling off the bleachers.”
It was a riot of noise! Yet somehow, without it, the game would not quite have been a game.
The green-and-yellows raced around the field, chanted on by their fan club and the drums and the vuvuzelas and the smoke machines and the screaming kids. Forty-five minutes of a clean game, except for the exclamations from the fan club… no score.
Halftime arrived. Collette and Rose took a walk around the park, watching over the bright lights and the 2,620 fans purchasing second-supper hot dogs, pretzels, nachos, and ice cream bars.
The air was still somber. Still on the touch of muggy, hanging silent over the astroturf of the low fields and the natural grass of the high field.
Back at the start of the second, Rose had the novel idea to stand at the fence, feet away from the game. It was a sensation. Forty-five minutes passed in a flash as first AC STL scored an impressive two-man assist, including Number 11, whose Italian name Carrie-Bri could not remember, and so she alternatingly called him ‘Fettucini’, ‘Alfredo’, and ‘Mussolini’. The crowds were wild. Overtime. Four minutes. In the 90th minute, Austin scored. Things were looking a little bleak. Then, in the very last moment… in rushed a 16 year-old kid, like a streak of lightening. His first goal. And the game was over, with the wild enthusiasm of the crowds!
They waited to slap high-fives with all the players, who, though looking exhausted, seemed happy that they were one step closer, hopefully, to the play-offs.
And as they walked off the field, great folds of lightening circumnavigated the west. Beautiful.