High school football

I like high school football--it's one of those institutions that make me like being a Pennsylvanian, and I guess an American. Of course, it's more fun when you win, as the hometown team did tonight, even though they were playing away. And it's even more more fun when they beat the rivals in the next town over. They suck because they're not us. It all makes sense in the heat of the moment.

For years after I wasn't in band anymore, the sound of a marching band made me nostalgic. Now the sound of a good marching band playing good marching band music gives me pleasure, but bad bands grate upon me like nothing else ... except, I guess, an actual grater. Like if somebody came at my scalp with a slaw grater or something. That would suck.

Tonight, sitting amongst the parents, I actually felt like part of a demographic, if only briefly ... this never happens to me. Usually I feel kind of alien. But today, sitting with other kids' parents, around hundreds of people more or less like me, I felt like one of a crowd of people who were generally decent people who often try to do their best, whatever they're trying to do.

And out of the thousand or more people there, I didn't see one of them--not one--whom I'd want to have as vice president. Huh.