Finding the Best and Worst of Humanity at One Home College Football Game

Fall comes with college football, and college football comes with a whole lot of things: historic rivalries, weekly rankings, massive tailgates, hyped stadiums, and Dr Pepper Fansville ads. Last Saturday, Penn State lost at its own Homecoming game against an unranked Wisconsin team. Over the course of watching that game with my sixteen-year-old from our seats in row 71 of the EEU section in Beaver Stadium, college football also offered a glimpse of the best and worst of humanity.

Let me explain, starting with a snapshot of the worst: a man, somewhat inebriated, screaming obscenities at the 18-23-year-old players and the Penn State coaching staff when the tides of the game turned in Wisconsin's favor. Granted, given that those obscenities were coming from his seat in row 69 in the upper section, none of the players or staff heard them. But given that my daughter and I were seated two rows behind him, we heard them pretty clearly.

You can try not to hear them. You can try not to listen. You can try not to reflect that these obscenities are coming from a grown man who is raging over a game. A game! A game that's being played by young men who are 30 years younger than him. For a while I did try, but when the screaming continued and intensified, I couldn't block it out. 

Everything about the scene rankled: the intensity of his nastiness, the smugness of how superior his own judgments were to the coaching staff's, the cruelty of his critique, the crass targeting of specific players, some of whom have shared meals at our family's kitchen table due to my husband's role as the team chaplain. It was more than ugly raging — it was ugly raging at people we know and care for. 

When I thought that he might have worn himself out with his yelling, he brought God into it. More precisely, he brought God's name into it. And after his third utterance of Jesus Christ, to the utter shock of my 16-year old, I stood from my seat, walked behind him, firmly placed my hand on his shoulder, leaned forward, lowered my voice to its deepest register, and spoke clearly into his ear:

Enough. You have taken this far enough. You will stop your behavior, and you will stop taking the Lord's name in vain.

Then I lifted my hand from his shoulder and returned to my seat. My actions had been so sudden that I hadn't even imagined how he might respond. He glanced back briefly, clearly irritated as if I was a gnat in his ear, pointed his hand in my direction, dropped it back to his side, then continued to angrily mutter to himself.

To be clear, this didn't feel like a victory. I was shockingly livid as I sat on my bleacher seat, adrenaline coursing through my veins, and a stream of angry dialogue running through my mind toward this angry man: So, you're saying you're so great that you could go out there and do better? I'd like to see it. I'd like to see you out on that field for one play. Let's see how that goes for you, buddy.

You've never made a mistake in your life before either, right? How would you like it when you screw up something up at work and a person lets you know. Oh, they let you know about your mistake loud and clear. They curse you. They tell you how stupid you are. They don't relent — louder, angrier, nastier, they shred you with their words. More people join, and they're all screaming at you, and everyone near and far can hear what an absolute screw-up you are. Nobody cares that you might have been trying your best, or working hard, or just having an off-day. Nobody cares about you at all — they just want you to know how terrible you are. How'd you like to experience THAT, buddy? How'd you like to be treated exactly how you're treating these players right now?

In this moment, sitting in row 71 of Beaver Stadium with Penn State losing to Wisconsin, I realize that I kind of hated this guy.

Then a new thought dawned: although I was sober, quiet, and using more refined language in the scathing talking-to I was conducting in my head, I was just as consumed with anger as he was. Him, with Penn State football. Me, with him for acting badly in his anger.

Granted, I reigned in my anger better. No doubt there. But it stuck me that the human condition, including my condition as a human, is pretty darn broken.

So, if that was a momentary snapshot of the worst of humanity, what moment captured the best?

Well, this takes us to another man in the stands. A man who sat several seats to the left in row 70, who kept recording the field on his phone's camera. It caught my eye because he clearly wasn't following the game's action. Each time Penn State punted down the field, he lifted his phone and started filming from midfield then toward the sideline.

Two things eventually hit me: One, he was filming the person retrieving the kicking tee. Two, that person had to be his son.

When I asked him, my assumptions were confirmed. His 18-year-old son, a freshman at Penn State, was a new equipment assistant for the team, and this man, this father, was so proud of his son running onto the field, snagging the tee, and running back to the sideline, that he filmed it happening each and every time.

"I'm sure it's pretty obvious that I'm his dad," he said with a smile to me, then a nod to his phone. "It's such a dad thing to do, right?"

And it was.

It was a dad thing to do. It was exactly the type of thing that a dad does, that a good dad does. The type of dad who watches for his son, even when the crowd is looking in the opposite direction, even when the son's actions might not be as exciting or impressive as what others around him are doing. The type of dad who records his son doing his job, just because that son is doing what he's supposed to be doing, and just because he's so darn proud of his son for doing it.

It wasn't a good evening for Penn State football, but it gave me a lot to think about. About the angry man who acted so badly, so cruelly, in his anger. About myself, as I confronted my own anger, which felt justified at first before it fizzled into awareness that I'm just as prone, just as susceptible, to judgement and rage. And certainly, about the father who filmed his tee-grabbing son, serving as an unexpected reminder of the ultimate Good Father, a father who rejoices over his kids, even when his kids might not be doing anything spectacular.

Even when a certain kid in row 71 is angry at someone in row 69, the Good Father sees her and loves her. He also sees the man in row 69, too, loving him despite his bad behavior, yet wanting so much more, so much better — not just from him, but also for him. And he, as the ultimate Good Father, knew all along that none of us could just "be better" on our own, which was why He provided the one and only way back to Him through his own son, Jesus.

Because that's what a Good Father does. He sees the best and worst of humanity, not just at a Penn State football game, but across all the world, across all time, across all ages past and present and still to come. He has seen it all, and he made a way for our worst to be covered and forgiven and redeemed. Not because of our own goodness, but because of His.

Because that's what a Good Father does.

Hello, September, My Old Friend

Today is September 1. Today is also a sultry 88 degrees. In my mind these two statements don't align, even though they're true. I expect September to arrive with a hint of crispness, like biting into a fresh Honeycrisp apple, but this September has arrived like we're opening the door to a hot oven. It's a humid, sticky, in-your-face type of a heat, the kind of heat you know won't last forever, and you're glad for that.

It's been a long time since I've last written here, and in that time, a great deal has changed. Two of our children have graduated — one from college, one from high school — and now that the fall semester has begun, only our youngest daughter, a high school junior, lives at home. This feels significant, yet I haven't had much time to process this nudge toward empty nesting.

On the personal front, I also made a significant pivot:

After teaching communications for 21 years at Penn State in the Liberal Arts, I accepted a new job to teach communications for the professional graduate program at Penn State's Business College. The application and interview process took several months, as most job searches in academia do. When I heard that I had been awarded the position, my reaction ran the gamut: excitement, gratitude, and relief intermingled with a trace of exhaustion, and add a scoop of disbelief, then cycle right back to excitement and profound gratitude.

I had interviewed for my original job at Penn State when our oldest daughter was three weeks old. She turned 21 this spring and graduated, then a few weeks later, our middle daughter finished her senior year of high school and prepared to enter college. Closing my own professional chapter in lockstep with these graduations felt poetic, perhaps, like it was time for certain doors to be closing and other doors to be opening. 

I'm proud of myself. I'm doing something new after two decades of doing something familiar. I'm meeting new people, teaching new classes, and understanding new policies in a new college and department. I'm stretching and learning and growing. 

This September arrives not just with 88-degree heat, but with a feeling of fresh opportunity, new challenges, and room for growth. And, of course, it also arrives with a first-day-of-class photo taken in my new office, even if I'm 48.

Here's to new open doors. Here's to a new position, a new school year, to September, and to God's faithfulness in all and through all.

Beach Blanket Thoughts

 

I've heard that it takes roughly three days to switch out of "work mode" and let go of stressors when you go on vacation. This seems true. At least, it felt true for me when my family traveled to Florida during our spring break last week.

Sometimes you don't know how tightly wound you are until you unwind. The weeks leading up to spring break moved too quickly and had been too full. All work and no play. Deadlines and commitments, plus a double wallop of bronchitis and pneumonia, plus poor sleep, plus general end-of-winter fatigue all added up to one spectacularly lackluster version of me. I felt colorless. Bland. Dull. Flat.

But something changed around the third or fourth day in Florida. At this point, my meds had kicked in — my cough receded, my lungs expanded more easily, my body felt less tired. More than that, my spark kicked in. There I was, lying on a beach towel, pleasantly warm and mostly properly sunscreened. My brain finally had churned its way through a tangled cluster of work-related-thoughts, freeing up the space to think more freely, more creatively.

To the soundtrack of gentle waves, seagull cries, lazy conversations, and aerosol sunscreen sprays up and down the beach, my body molded into the sand and I let myself breathe deeply. In that comfortably warm and hazy space, drifting between partial sleep and happy disassociation, my thoughts wandered.

Beside us were young parents with a baby. As I overheard them instruct her to not eat sand, I thought about parents and children. How do generations keep doing this? This process of being children, then having children, and raising children? How have Joel and I, specifically, done this three times over, this raising of little humans into bigger humans who intuitively know that when they see sand, it's not for eating? 

My thoughts flitted to how the sunshine makes the tips of waves glitter like diamonds, then back to whether I had applied enough sunscreen. Somehow it's never enough sunscreen, even if I'm continually re-applying. Inevitably, one rogue strip or section of my body will end the day as if it's never encountered sunscreen, turning a shocking tomato-red.

Without thoughts of work crowding every nook and cranny of my consciousness, and with the freedom that comes from being shaken loose from a routine and dropped into an entirely different setting, other thoughts appeared in stream-of-conscious wisps, random and shaken loose, rising to the surface then evaporating almost as soon as I think them: 

I think I'll become a person who does pushups. Like, regularly. I'm going to start doing pushups each morning. Maybe even each evening. I wonder what's the most common color for painting a front door? I look good in baseball caps. What makes a person classy? Why is it easier to dress nicely in the fall than it is in the summer? I should apply to give a TED talk. Yes, I'm going to give a TED talk. Add that to the list of life goals. Could I be a person who shuffle dances?

And the seagulls cried, and the waves lapped at the shore, and the sprays of sunscreen sounded in the distance, and the baby ate the sand despite her parents' warnings, and I lay there, having the best random beach blanket thoughts, and then, with a happy contented sigh, I had one more:

This is it. I've done it. I've finally unwound.

Ode to the End of February

Multiple times this past month, I've asked myself the same question: "What is wrong with you?"

I've come up with the answer. February. February is what's been wrong with me. 

There have been good moments in February. For instance, my six-year-old neighbor brought me a handmade Valentine, and that ranks pretty high. Beyond that, the month has blurred. I've taught classes (so many classes), and graded things (so many things), and been asked "what's for dinner?" roughly 300 times, which makes no mathematical sense because February only has 28 days, but somehow I'm convinced I've cooked dinner 300 times. The repetition and grayness has worn me down despite my best efforts at optimism 

I'm ready for it not to be February.

And, in very good news, this desire will be fulfilled tomorrow. Tomorrow is March, and March feels more hopeful than February. Days will grow longer. Temperatures, slowly, will start to rise. March isn't out of the tunnel, but March at least hints toward the light.

So long, February, you short, yet long, little month.