I’ll just warn you right now: I’m about to enter “get off my lawn” mode.
My wife, our two sons, and I went to Highland Park’s homecoming football game on Friday night. We bought general admission tickets. Given that my autistic son can’t handle loud noises, we sat in the east end of the stands, because the Highlander Band sits in the west end.
The Highlander Band might as well have been a rumor. Our section was filled with middle school and elementary school students, with hardly any parents in sight, and EVERY ONE OF THEM WAS TALKING during the national anthem. I couldn’t hear a note of it.
Once the game started, things got really crazy. Kids were pushing each other down the rows, in both directions. Other students were climbing — or being shoved — from one row to the next. I saw a kid get kicked in the head, just before I felt something hit my head. If Richard Bohac finds a way to keep these ragamuffins under control, then his reputation as a badass is even more well-deserved than I thought.
By the end of the first quarter, we’d had enough. The relatively empty visitors’ stands across the field looked like a respite, so we migrated over there. At first, the security guards wouldn’t let us in, because our tickets were for the home side. I appealed to the woman in the visitors’ box office. She asked me if I had intended to buy home tickets. “Yes,” I told her, “but sitting over there is like sitting in a mosh pit.”
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Perhaps I was so put off because I know the rambunctious 5-year-old who lives in my home all too well, and those kids in the east end of the home stands looked like his future. Or maybe I’m just getting old. Either way, I’ll pay whatever it takes for a reserved seat for my next game at Highlander Stadium. See you next year.
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