Cup XLII: Inside, Outside, KSU

Tea: Earl Grey

Music: "Wabash Cannonball," arranged for marching band

Time: Afternoon

Another football game finds me back in professional observer/chronicler mode. College this time: Baylor at Kansas State, on a gorgeous (if breezy) afternoon.

I went to school here, several lives ago. Didn't finish, but that's a long story for another time. Most of the football games I saw here, I saw from the pressbox. But for a while, before and after that, I was a fan.

Kansas State was pretty bad in those days, save for the 1982 season (a pressbox year for me). Empty seats abounded, and games were largely social (read: drinking) occasions.

The football team's better these days, but one thing hasn't changed. The tribal color on Saturdays in Manhattan is still purple.

I don't wear either team's colors when covering a game. It's a professionalism thing for me. It also marks me as an outsider to both tribes, putting me in the odd position of feeling out of place in a town I called home for years.

It's not that people are unfriendly. It's more my own sense of not belonging (and my tendency to slip into observation mode, which isn't always a bad thing).

It's okay, though. I have my havens here. Hibachi Hut. The Dusty Bookshelf. Radina's Coffeehouse. There are others, but those three are my haunts.

I go to see my friends Gary and Cheryl (and Hannah, their schnauzer, who loves me because I speak her language and throw a mean tennis ball for fetching). We drink diet soda and talk about sports, about theatre, about literature and music and ... and ... and ...

Before games, the three of us -- and others -- meet at the house of another friend, Jim. (I once mistook his voice for God's. Remind me to tell you the story sometime. It's kind of funny.)

We eat hamburgers, usually. Today, there were bratwursts, too. We talk, often about the upcoming game but just as often about whatever strikes our fancies.

Christians (in which number I both count myself and hope to be counted) are often told, "This world is not our home." That has some value in reminding us that we don't get to take all of our stuff with us when we move on to the next world.

But taken to an extreme, it can lead to clubbiness and clannishness and the idea that the simple pleasures of this life are to be avoided because they encourage "wordliness."

For my part, I'm grateful for a place at Jim's table, a spot on the pull-out sofa at Gary and Cheryl's, for a cup of coffee and a bowl of gumbo and a new old book of someone else's words.

Speaking of other people's words, here's tonight's ghost story:

A.C. Benson, "The Slype House"

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"

Cup XIX: Fire, but no Fireworks

Tea: Ginger Peach Green, with honey

Music: One fight song, one alma mater, a lot of drum line pounding

Time: Evening

Tomorrow's the homecoming football game for the high school where two of the kids go. Tonight was the bonfire, complete with burning of the opposing team in effigy.

Tried to convince the junior daughter to take along a bunch of Black Cats (no, not the animals), stuff them into the dummy (no, not the freshman son) and liven up said effigy-burning.

She refused, in a saddening display of good behavior. And by the time the freshman son got there -- looking quite dashing in his tuxedo, I must say -- the dummy was already in the fire.

Ah, well. Maybe they'll go out and TP someone's yard after the game.

I suppose tonight's creepy story should have something to do with fire, shouldn't it?

Here 'tis, then:

Edgar Allan Poe, "Hop-Frog"