3.11.2009

After Cloud Nine

Claire from her files to my inbox:

APRIL 4, 2008.

April showers have been beating down all night. A bunch of us went to see Leatherheads at Birkdale (in the lobby we saw one kid wearing a Sweet Sixteen shirt and Zach muttered something under his breath about a bandwagon). It was strange to slouch in the dark, quiet, half-empty theater like we might on any other Friday night, our legs slung carelessly over the railing... still not over the last seven days, when most of us had been standing and screaming, half-starved but adrenaline-buzzed in the Cloud Nine storm of fifty thousand people, more than six hundred miles away from this little town where it started oh so quietly.

At the end of the movie, George Clooney’s character huddles with his football team. They’re down, despondent, caked with mud, surely will lose.

“You guys having fun out there?” George asks, with his sparkling trademark grin shining under all that muck.

I have minor convulsions in my seat between Mike and Zach. “THAT’S WHAT BOB ASKED THEM!” I yelp in a whisper, bouncing my legs up and down on the rail.

They smile.

They know.


Reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about of late: 2008 was so special because 2008 was so special. It sounds like a tautology but I think it’s worth some consideration.

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