Cup XLI:I Know My Inner Fan is in Here Somewhere ...

Tea: Keemun Concerto

Music: Franz Ferdinand, "Take Me Out"; INXS, "Don't Change"; Lee Rocker, "Rockin' Harder"

Time: Mid-afternoon

You didn't know I was functional before 5 p.m., did you? Caffeine helps.

I couldn't tell you how many high school football games I've seen since my 16th birthday. (Yes, they played back then. Yes, the helmets had facemasks.) I can tell you how many I've seen for fun since turning 16, though:

One.

I was a junior in high school when I started covering our team for the local daily. (I suited up for two years, then decided I might be better at writing about the game than playing it.) When I moved back to the same paper in the late 1980s, I covered both the 11-man and eight-man versions -- first as a general assignment reporter, then as the area editor, then as the sports editor (a one-man department, I was, covering 14 high schools in two states).

I went to one game as a spectator over that span. It would have been in the early 1990s, but I don't remember the exact year.

I moved on to another Kansas newspaper for a little more than one year in the mid-1990s, covering high schools on Friday nights and the junior college team on Saturdays. Since 1997, I haven't seen a high school game for any reason.

But tonight, I'm going to a game with the junior daughter and sophomore son. Their school's team has been bad all year -- until the district part of the season. And in Kansas, that's all that really counts. Short version of the situation (because I'm not going through the rulebook to explain it all to you): Win tonight, and it's on to the playoffs -- and the 2-7 regular-season record be hanged.

I don't know any of the kids on the team. At least, I don't think I know any of them. It's a huge school, and my kids run more with the performing arts sets. But I'm looking forward to it. There's an atmosphere at high school games that can't be found anywhere else.

Plus, there's a light show afterward. Can't miss that.

And beyond that, this is a chance to engage with the larger world. Journalism prizes detachment, not engagement. I've played by those rules for years (and still have to play by them from time to time, as journalism work still pays a good chunk of the bills). But that's no longer the only rulebook in my life.

Will I be able to watch as a fan, and not analyze every play? Maybe not this time. But there will be others -- and other situations like this, other atmospheres to breathe in fully.

It's all part of learning to live more slowly, I suppose -- and as I do that, it seems that life opens up. Funny how things like that can work.

Today's scary story:

Robert H. Benson, "The Watcher"