bcs title game
(part eight)
((where were you?))


i have talked before on HACAM how my memory suffers from not being able to remember anything. that truth can be applied when it comes to the sugar bowl in 1993 as well. as an alabama football fan, that day, truly, should stand out above all others, right? it is the only national championship i've been able to experience as an aware fan. it was seventeen years ago, but seventeen years isn't that long, right?

well, for me, it seems like a very long time.

i don't remember much about my life around that time, because i don't want to remember much about my life around that time. i had a mother that was starting to wear down, her own tumultuous life chipping away at the invincible shell that i perceived her to have for the longest time after her and my father's divorce when i was eight. i had a younger brother in the house that was having growing pains of his own. the divorce was worse to him. asthma was kicking his ass. the medication designed to help him through the breathing problems was causing him to gain weight and his bones to grow brittle (not a good combination). all of this on top of some good, ole' fashioned o'kelley anxiety set him up for a bad to real bad next several years (i am ashamed to say i was unaware of all of this at the time.). and to top it off, there was a stepfather in the house. one that, in his own way i guess, cared for my mother. but, he was not a good man. and we'll leave it at that.

i don't remember much about early 1993, because i choose not to. here's what i remember about the game, itself. of course, i remember the george teague/lamar thomas non-play. i remember derrick lassic seeming unstoppable. i remember gene stallings being carried off the field on the shoulders of his players. that's it. that's pretty much the list. for a night, as a bama fan, that should stand out above and beyond all others, that's pretty pathetic, right?

it is what it is.

tonight should be different. we will have a house full of family and friends all with the same passionate, rooting interest. we will have children running around that care nothing about the most important football game to me of my lifetime, completely unaware of how this game and this excitement and this anticipation has done more for me getting past july 23rd than just a football game should hold weight to do so. we will have more food than we need. we will have a brand new television broadcasting in spellbinding high definition. we will have high fives. and cuss words. and joy. and sorrow. and, hopefully, a celebration for the ages.

or for the next seventeen years.

fuck you, cancer nightmares. there is a game on tonight.

come back tomorrow, thank you. or don't come back at all.

whatever.

where were you?