orange and blue

This weekend is a monumental one for The Ben. Tomorrow afternoon, beneath the clear blue and orange sky above Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, our Ben will witness his first Fighting Illini football game, and we can only hope that there will be a winning atmosphere about the stands before we leave. This week’s foe is the San Jose State Spartans, 14-point underdogs to our overachieving Illini, and with Benjamin P in tow, I think the superstitious needle is pointed fairly square in our favor. You see, last weekend The Ben watched his first Illini football game on TV at The J’s [our friends Jason and Joy Latek – those blessed babysitting souls] and the Illini pulled off what turned out to be the greatest comeback in Urbana history: a 27-7 deficit late in the third quarter reduced to a fourth-quarter tie which was readily decided in overtime by our beloved alma mater. Seeing as though our team was riding a 4-19 record before Ben started watching games, I think we have ourselves a new superstitious tenet to uphold, that is, if The Ben watches every Illini game from now on then we will win the National Championship! Stop laughing - it’s possible. . .

Anyhoo, we will be making our trek downstate through about a 140 miles of dried-up corn fields with The J’s along for companionship and, let’s face it – we’re driving 140 miles with a young fella who has entered into a permanent feud with his car-seat, we’ll need The J’s to maintain our sanity as well. The Ben will experience his first singing of the Alma Mater and the Oskee-Wow-Wow, he’ll shake his keys at kickoff, he’ll make his way “to the left” and “to the right” with his arms around his neighbor’s shoulders, and he’ll catch his first [and maybe only] glimpse of our honored Chief Illiniwek performing his ritual dance at halftime [it seems there are too many 1/64 Indian-Americans out there who find him offensive and hence he appears to be sadly dancing his way out of this politically-retarded world forever]. And if the timing is right, Ben-jamin’ just might get to take part in the most-honored Illini football tradition – tailgating!

GO ILLINI!