Bash Of The Titans
Patriots set all kinds of league and franchise records in 59-0 blowout vs Titans. Boston Herald. I set a record at Gillette Stadium, too. Least time spent at a game.
Snagged clubhouse tickets. It was the girls’ turn, seeing as the boy has multiple trips to Fenway, Gillette and the Garden (he never got any Newbury Street shopping trips or high tea at the Four Seasons with mom and grandma, though). The two girls, 15 and 11, were excited and wearing their brother’s Pats gear. It was pouring rain and cold, a nor’easter, but everyone had winter boots, multiple layers, big trashbags for cover and a towel for the seats. Small blessings, it turned to snow 15 minutes before the game started. Wasn’t that bad out there, and the girls seemed comfortable enough, and interested in what was going on, though the older one remarked she knows more about Quidditch than football. But a big league sports event is a heck of a spectacle. Very pretty, with all the bright lights, massive TV screens and electronic ad banners, all the colorful uniforms and fans’ multicolored foul weather gear in the blowing snow.
Great touchdown in the first quarter, Pats’ O clears the way, Titan’s D lets Maroney through for a 45-yard touchdown run, he just makes it, tumbling into the end zone, pretty incredible, Pats’ Minuteman militia firing a couple of volleys and the cheerleaders in skimpy Halloween costumes dashing out into the snow for a few minutes.
About five minutes into the second quarter, after about an hour out in the weather, the younger one wants to go inside the clubhouse for a while. Hot chocolate? The older one thinks that’s a good idea. We go in. No tables. It’s jammed. We get hot chocolate. It looks cold out there. They want to stay in. I ask if they’ve had enough. “You call,” the 15-year-old says to the 11-year-old. “No, you call,” the younger one says to the older one. “You call, no givebacks,” the older one says. They’re afraid they’ll get in trouble for wanting to go so soon. “OK,” says Dad, figuring we’ve been at the stadium for more than two hours and dropped about $40 on food and drink, plus it’s snowing sideways. “Sounds like maybe you guys have had enough already.” ”Yeah, we have,” says the younger one, grinning, with that sophisticated, worldly sort of been-there-done-that air she manages to pull off 11. I venture out down the slush-covered stairs and through the somewhat sparsely occupied stands … half the clubhouse crowd is inside watching TV … to inform my co-worker we’re out of there. He’s standing, cheering, getting soaking wet with his 13-year-old boy, and not going anywhere. “You want that towel or those trashbags?” “We’re not going to be sitting down again,” he says, a slightly deranged look of ecstacy on his face midway through that record-breaking 2nd quarter drive.
We’re pulling out of the parking lot when my 13-year-old boy, watching at home as the Pats score a record 5 touchdowns in the second quarter, texts “Looks like a blowout.” He had spent the last three days trying to guilt, bargain and otherwise talk one of his sisters into giving up a ticket. His younger sister calls him with the galling news that we’re all done, coming home, and he’s stunned, the wind knocked out of him. Then we set a stadium record for getting out of there, usually a one-and-a-half hour ordeal to the highway. We get there in about 10 and are home 45 minutes later.
But you know what? They loved it, had a great time, will tell all their friends about it at school today. And so did I, and now I’m telling you all about it. It was a day I’ll always remember. The day I took my girls out for a big daddy date, made them happy by giving them a chance to see the Patriots at Gillette, got them hot dogs and sodas and nachos, and made them even happier by getting them out of there at exactly the right time, so we could listen on the radio nice and warm all the way home about how the Pats were administering a record-setting beatdown on the Titans.
Topics: Boston, kids, moms and dads, sports
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:03 am on Monday, October 19, 2009
4 Responses to “Bash Of The Titans”
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October 19th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
What a great story!
October 19th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Sounds like an excellent time was enjoyed by all. And watching from about the time you got to the highway (95, I’m presuming) errands gobbled up all of the first and much of the second quarter, I can’t argue with the logic of warm weather football watching. One question, did the Kraft’s invite alGore to the game? I can’t recall a snowy October day like yesterday in my brief years as a New Englander.
October 19th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Good job, Dad. Although I wonder why Boy had to stay home.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Three free tickets, not four! I can’t afford venues like that. Like half the other people in that place. If they had raised a cheer of “Thanks, Boss!” it would have been deafening.