My Eagles Are Better Than Your Eagles

By "your Eagles", I mean these, for whom I have never harbored even a vague fondness. By "my Eagles", I mean these, for whom I suddenly harbor incredible fondness. Unfortunately, in this instance, "better" is not being used in the sense of "winning", but I'll get to that.

Our first football game was this Friday. The little dudes in white are our St. John Bosco Eagles. They were fewer and smaller in stature than our opponents from St. Paul, but still far cooler because I teach half of them (and, clearly, having me for a teacher makes a middle-schooler inarguably better than average). Additionally, they had several of these folks on their side of the stands:

Sr. Anna is on the left, Sr. Carmen on the right, both wonderful, joyful women. I accompanied them and Sr. Esther to the game. When they asked during dinner if I wanted to go, my response was to half fall out of my seat and knock over my glass -- I'm not kidding. Ever since Rampart, I've loved going watching teams from schools I am somehow associated with play football (Air Academy, Air Force, Delaware), and this is the first time I've gotten to see MY students play, and hang out with MY students while I'm at it.

The SJB Pep Squad, upon whom I have bestowed the alternate name of "Sinking Cutest Thing Ever". Appropriate, no?

Then the weather changed on us. It's been unusually wet here in San Antonio this summer. Ultimately, this is good, because the region has been in drought for a long time. When you're trying to watch a football game, the blessing of rain gets lost. Still, most of the parents and fans stayed, God bless 'em.

This is one of the things I love about St John Bosco School: it really is a community, and the people in it really stick by each other in matters great and small. Football, of course, being a "great" matter.

Our dance team (half of whom are also in my classes) stuck it out for a while, braving smeared eye make-up and donning ponchos before their grown-ups finally told them to go home. The football team played through, but no sense in these lovely ladies getting pneumonia -- or electrocuted.

A stranger saw me getting doused and handed me his umbrella before he left (thank you, Mysterious Sir!), allowing me to keep watching and photographing from quasi-dry space. Sr. Anna broke out the heavy-duty umbrella, while two more of my students were real men about it and just got wet.

If you look very closely at the scoreboard way behind Sister and the boys, you may notice the score of 23, Visitors, and 0, Home. I'm sorry to say, "home" was us. I was disappointed, I'll admit, but it was fun.

What's not so fun is that I'm not coming down with a cold, and if my abuelita were alive she would surely blame it on my standing, soaking wet, in the rain for two hours. On that note, I'm going to go drink some orange juice and sleep.