Pensacola—A sports bar. The Auburn Tigers were playing the Virginia Cavaliers, and I was the only person in the place not wearing orange and blue.
I am not an Auburn man. I root for the Crimson Tide. My mother roots for the Tide. You cannot change horses this late in life.
Even so, when the Tigers made Final Four basketball history, my Auburn friends lost their minds and nearly set fire to their own hair.
Because that’s how Auburn Tigers are.
One of my Auburn friends called me to say: “I don’t care who your team is, if you don’t come watch the Tigers with me you are a heartless sinner who drinks sugarless iced tea and doesn’t love the Lord.”
Message received. So there we were.
The television above the bar played the game. I sat beside two older women from Mobile. Both had white hair. Both sipped from wine glasses and wore Auburn colors.
“We’ve been friends since high school,” said Carol. “We even finish each other’s sentences.”
“I was gonna say the same
thing,” said Marie.
They cackled. They toasted their glasses.
Marie is an Auburn graduate, and she warned me that if I divulged their ages, I would be singing soprano for the rest of my life.
They have a lot in common. Carol lost her husband some years ago from prostate cancer. Marie lost her husband nine months later from pancreatic cancer.
“I never cared for sports,” said Marie. “It was always my husband who liked them.”
“Same here,” added Carol.
But that changed when their husbands died. Both admit that after the shock wore off, it felt like a vital routine was missing in life. The world was different without their husbands’ tailgating trips to Jordan-Hare stadium, or games blaring on TV.
“Yeah,” said Marie. “I just missed John so bad, I had to do something to keep him alive.”
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