Grow Up and Eat Some Scones

Football season is mercifully upon us - thank goodness for small miracles! It's been a long, hard summer filled with endless replays of the Super Bowl - I just about have the on-field calls and announcers' play-by-play memorized, which means it really and truly is time for some new games to be played. Tomorrow the NFL will kick off at Heinz Field, where the defending world champions will get to business creating new magical memories for another season. Until then, around here it's all Mountaineers all the time...

Over the past weekend, WVU opened their first Pat White-less season in recent memory with a win at home - and, wouldn't you know it, it took me moving from Morgantown all the way to North Carolina to score season tickets to the 'Eers! Now, for every home game, I will watch WVU live and in person at Mountaineer Field and I will treasure every minute of it. I even came home with a new motto: "If you're lucky enough to drink a Heineken in the Blue Lot at 9:00 on a sunny Saturday morning surrounded by thousands of crazed Mountaineer fans, some of whom look as if they haven't yet been to bed, you're lucky enough."

But I digress. As many tailgates as I've attended over the past decade and a half (and I stress the word MANY) this one took the cake. It wasn't that the cast of characters had changed that much - a few additions and several old standbys from the good old days. It wasn't just that I got to park in the Blue Lot and sit in box seats - though that helped. It clearly was that I have changed. Dare I say it out loud lest it be true: I think I may have grown up.

We ate omelets and fruit salad and had a table and a tent and a small stove, set up by people who weren't out boozing until 3:00 in the morning. In fact, our tailgating crew was up bright eyed and ready at 7:00, not hungover at all. We drank cold beer out of actual coolers. I brought scones for crying out loud. Scones. I doubt I even knew such things existed several years ago when tailgating equaled someone stopping off at Sheetz to lug a case of Natural Light to the parking lot.

Yes, we truly were among the adults. And I belonged there. And it felt awesome. It's taken a while for me to make this transition, as I've spent so many years of my life in school or getting back into school, surrounded by students younger and wilder than me. (Okay, maybe not wilder, but certainly younger...)

Everywhere I turned, I saw families with small kids, indoctrinating them as they should into the Mountaineer traditions. Dads threw footballs with their sons, little girls bounced around in their replica WVU cheerleader outfits, moms sipped cocktails and their husbands grilled hot dogs and downed Bud Light. They've been there all along in the Blue Lot, kids growing up this way and fans bleeding gold and blue. Only, this was my first time as a part of it, to really see it through new eyes.

It often feels that things stay stagnant, that there is no meaningful change. But this time, I can say the change in me is remarkable. I'm not a different person entirely, but I do feel I've turned a corner I'm not sure I had foreseen I would.

And it seems right. I can't wait to get back there this weekend, to share another day of comraderie at Milan Puskar Stadium. I haven't decided what I will contribute to the tailgate yet, but the fact I am bringing something of worth is in itself a step forward. And even though I did see a beer bong after the game ended, I am confident I won't be on the receiving end of that. Those days are behind me. I am now (mostly) a grown-up.

At the tailgates, anyway. As for the rest of my life, we'll have to just wait and see...