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While at the Game

I'm waiting for #2 to come home from a party, so in order to stay awake, I'll write one more little post about the game.

One of my favorite things to do at things like football games is to people-watch--there's the coach-from-another-life woman with the ear piercing shriek, there's the guy who #1 thinks talks as if he has gauze stuck in his mouth, there's the endless parade of middle-school kids marching back and forth as they have done for generations (why is that?), and there are the people who wave up a spectacle to someone at the top of the stands and try to have actual conversations with them from down near the track. Stop that.

Somewhere during the first quarter, I noticed a kid a couple of rows down from my seat. He was eating everything--hot dog, popcorn, chocolate that must have covered every single finger so that he had to lick his hands for a good five minutes and then wipe them on his pants. He had a Diet Pepsi. But wait? Look at the bright red hair! Look at those roundish cheeks! Is he Matthew, my old friend? Yes, oh my gosh! I elbowed #1 in the ribs and pointed to the kid with the red hair. It was Matthew, my friend from a few years back.

When Matthew was only two, I was his Sunday school teacher, and we became fast friends. He called me Miss Robyn and hugged me every time he saw me. We had great conversations, Matthew and I. When he got a little older, his mother, who was a friend of mine, helped him to call me at work on my birthday. Two or three years in a row, he sang Happy Birthday into my voice mail, and I saved those recordings until I moved home to work.

Now, Matthew is quite close to being in middle school. And Matthew will not call me Miss Robyn. And Matthew will not hug me. And Matthew will not sing to me on my birthday. He did flash a smile, though, but that was all I could score. Well, that would have to do. I knew someday he'd outgrow me. What a kid, though, that Matthew.

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