Nows and Forevers

How can you tell me at a high-school football game? I’m the one with a book.
I’m not a football fan. Never have been. I’ve done a fair amount of football-related stories in my journalism career, whether it’s been going to charity dinners and events where football legends were the guests of honor (Mike Ditka and Joe Namath among them) or covering the NFL media rights deals and TV ratings in the 2000s for The Hollywood Reporter. I think my last NFL story was a deep dive into teams’ Covid protocols in 2021.
I can’t even bring myself to watch a football game. Ever. Before my kid was in cheerleading and then marching band, I went to two football games: One my uncle took me to when he was photographing it for the newspaper (sometime in the mid-1970s) and then one my father took me to at the University of Connecticut on a cold October or November Saturday in 1984.
I remember freezing. I remember being bored. Even when I started at UConn as a freshman two years later, and I lived near the stadium, I could have cared less. I never went.
My lack of interest in football puts me out of step with a lot of America, particularly in Friday Night Lights territory where I live now.
Football is a very big deal. It really wasn’t where I grew up in Connecticut. My high school was too small for a football team. No one ever said they missed it.
Back to tonight, where I am sitting in the cold metal stands, surrounded by fans, mostly parents and grandparents. Maybe I’m the only one who isn’t paying attention. Looks like I’m the only one over the age of 5.
I’m here to support my daughter. She doesn’t care about football either. But she’s in the marching band. So for the last four years, this is what we’ve done.
It’s her senior oyear. I’ll miss the band and the pomp and circumstance. It’s been a big part of her life, and it’s soon to fade away. I don’t want to miss a moment. I’ve enjoyed holding up my iPhone to record each performance, focusing on her.
I won’t miss football. And it took a while for me to figure out that I could do other things in between the marching band performances. Sometimes it was talking to other parents. But lately it’s been reading and writing. Last week, I drafted several pages of writing on my iPhone. Today, with a lot of reading to do for my book project, I brought one of the hardcovers. And I wrote this blog post, and a journal entry. By hand.
I almost brought my Chromebook. I figured that was pushing it.
Right?