Unlucky 13

My thirteenth experience of The Game yesterday, marking Edith's third outing to the Yale Bowl, was all kinds of bad memorable. Those of you who are comfortable being called eccentric follow Ivy League football already know that Yale lost to Harvard 37-6, their biggest loss to Harvard at home since the inaugural game at the Yale Bowl in 1914. When our party got into the stadium at the start of the second quarter, the score was already 13-0, and by the third quarter we had changed from rooting for a Yale win to rooting against a shut-out. As today's New Haven Register described it, in prose as appalling as the display on the field:

They like to say of the Yale-Harvard football game that the players will have this memory for a lifetime.

After the events of Saturday at Yale Bowl, they might call it post traumatic stress disorder.

A crowd of 57,248 bared witness to one of the most devastating afternoons in Yale football history, profoundly atypical in every facet from the team that came into the final game with a historic agenda.

Yale was unable to run, pass, block, tackle or defend with even a modicum of success Saturday, and, by gosh, no one could have foreseen that confluence of events coming after a 9-0 hors d’oeuvre.

Dangling metaphors and false reports of spectator nudity aside, the Register caught the spirit of the afternoon inside the Bowl. This wasn't even good football followed by a disappointing loss. This was a hideous rout.

But if fans started streaming out by the end of the third quarter, it was not only due to the lopsided score. Their experience getting to The Game in the first place no doubt influenced their decision, too...

Edith is one-hundred times better in a car than when she was an infant, but even so she'd often prefer not to ride. On occasion we'll head out the door to drive somewhere--church, the grocery store, Tom's parents' house in Delaware--and she'll suggest, "Let's walk instead." Yesterday we tried it Edith's way.

Not from the get-go, of course. She and I left home in our station wagon at 7:30, doughnuts and coffee in hand and coins for the tolls in the center console. On the way out of Princeton we passed a police car that had pulled someone over. Edith wanted to know what that was about, so I explained that sometimes the police stop drivers who are going too fast to punish them for driving dangerously. Edith wanted to know how fast was too fast, so I tried to explain speed limits to her and to point out a speed limit sign. Thereafter she asked me throughout the drive whether I was driving fast. I explained to her, "I'm driving safely below the speed limit. But yes, I'm driving fast because this is a fast road." Indeed, the Turnpike, the Parkway, I-287, and the Merritt are all fast roads. So when she asked for the fourth or fifth time as we were nearing New Haven, I told her again that we were on a fast road but promised, "Soon we will turn onto a slow road. In fact, it will be a very slow road today."

Little did I know. We exited the Merritt Parkway onto Rt. 34, the exit for the Yale Bowl, at 10:01. At 10:07 I called my friend, Rebecca, at the tailgates to let her know that traffic was inching along but that we were in town and hopefully would be parked and eating hot dogs by 10:30. At 10:27 I called her to say that I wasn't sure I would arrive before the special parking pass she had acquired for me would expire at 11am, but that I hoped to get there by kickoff at noon. A case, I thought, of setting an excessively generous target to minimize frustration. Traffic was scarcely moving, and Edith was rapidly making her way through all the dozen or so books I had brought. The Bowl still wasn't in sight, though I expected it was over the next rise.

A minute or so after I hung up with Rebecca I noticed the first people walking past me on foot along the shoulder of the highway, stadium seat cushions in hand. Ten minutes later we hadn't moved any further, and a few more fans had passed on foot. It was a divided highway, and I happened to be positioned at one of the few places where one could turn left, across the lanes opposite and into a small residential neighborhood. I peered down the residential street for any signs forbidding street parking. There were no other cars on the street, but I didn't see anything saying it was not allowed. I decided to act.

Pulling off at the edge of someone's lawn as their dogs ran up to bark at us, I hastily repacked our bags to bring only the minimum gear and swung Edith onto my hip. We locked the car and returned to the highway, crossing to the other side and setting off on foot, rapidly passing all the cars that had been near us in line.

It turned out the Bowl wasn't over the next rise, but it felt so good to be moving that I didn't mind. As we passed other residential side streets here and there more fans on foot appeared, having also abandoned their cars. (Indeed, when we returned to our car late in the afternoon, the street where we had parked was full of cars.) Other pedestrians tended to pass us, as I was toting a diaper bag, a bag of warm layers, and 32-pound Edith--and for the first time ever had decided I didn't need to wear sneakers to The Game but could actually look reasonably fashionable at the tailgates. Oh, vanity. The blisters were rising rapidly. But inside car after car people were studying Connecticut road maps and bickering. Blisters and all, I preferred to be in my own shoes.

Hot and pained as I was, I didn't want to let Edith walk. The cars may have been almost at a standstill, but I never knew when they would lurch forward a few more feet or when one of them might pull over into the shoulder to try to get a better look ahead, mindless of pedestrians. So I kept her on my hip...and then on my shoulders...and then on my hip. She was in a great mood, patient and agreeable, interested to know only when she would see Becca. I suppose the great thing about two year olds is that if you don't signal that an event is out of the ordinary, they don't necessarily know. All of life is an adventure, and adults are forever exposing them to new experiences. Like walking along a highway full of cars to a football game.

As we came over the third or fourth rise and into a heavily commercial area, Edith began to sing "Bulldog, Bulldog" on continuous loop, growing ever louder. It was perfect. I hoped that some of the grumpy Yale fans stranded in their cars heard her as we went by. She was indefatigable.

And so it was her spirit that finally got us there, stumbling into the tailgates and up to our friends a few minutes before kickoff. Seeing them was wonderful, of course, if all too brief. Edith renewed acquaintance with friend Toby, whom she first met at the Bowl last year, and found both Becca and the hot dogs. Mama told her war story, one among many that day.

And the good news is that we didn't walk back. Toby's folks drove us back to our car, clocking the distance for us at 2.8 miles. Then they caravaned with us to a family restaurant for some good grub before we all headed home.

It was during the ride back to our car that Tom called to check in. I was telling him about my long march along the highway and he was groaning in sympathy. Then he asked, "Was Edith in your arms or in the stroller?"

The stroller. The stroller that resides in the back of our station wagon. It is a testament to how rarely we use the stroller my utter feeble-mindedness that I never thought of the stroller. Edith generally has little patience for it, and I prefer traveling as gear-free as possible. And so I pride myself on my strong arms these days. But pride goeth before a fall. This morning I could barely move. I hobbled around church like an old lady, favoring the worst blisters, staggering on aching hips, trying not to move my neck, hoping no one would grab me by the arm.

We won't forget the stroller next time. And we won't forget The Game, 2007. I can bare witness to that.