|
|
Saturday, Jan. 03, 2004 - 2:25 a.m. LEND ME SOME SUGAR Yesterday night I went “out” to some bars with my brothers during our last time together in New Orleans for the holidays. A friend of one of my brothers, who happens to have very strong ties to the LSU Athletic Department, joined us after we visited his downtown hotel room. We then went to eat at a local tavern. As a backdrop for readers not in Louisiana, tomorrow night is the Sugar Bowl, the National Championship game for college football. Because LSU is a local team playing in the championship, just about anyone in this state who has an interest in college football would give anything to go to this game. The only problem is that there are a limited amount of tickets available to the fans of each team and potential buyers are chosen on a lottery basis. The rest of the tickets go to all kinds of dignitaries and well-to-do people, much like the Super Bowl. In fact, last time I checked e-bay, tickets to this game were going for $1,800 each. As I rode through downtown seeing all the media and tourists in town for the game, I marvelled at how difficult it would be for me to get tickets if I wanted them. They would be impossible to find, and if I managed to find them, they would cost me a fortune. Then in my head I joked to myself. I was willing to bet that I would be more likely to get tickets to this game than find a girlfriend within the next two weeks. Again, I want to reiterate how desperately fans in Louisiana want to go to this game. This is the first championship in over forty years that LSU would be playing in, and the game is only 70 miles down the road from the LSU campus. There are probably fans out there that would cut off fingers to go to this game. The odds against my ability to get tickets at an affordable price, two days before the game, are phenomenal. In the glove compartment of my car are two Sugar Bowl tickets. My brother’s friend offered to give them to me for their face value of $150 a piece. I managed to get two because I insisted that I not go alone. The next decision I had was to choose who I wanted the second ticket to go to. All of my brothers had out-of-town commitments that made them unable to attend. That left one other person in my nonexistent life that I knew would want to go with me. So I called my old Houston roommate. I have to give him credit. Back in September he called be completely out of the blue to ask if I wanted to go to a regular season game. At a time in my life when I could not name anyone I would consider a friend, he came out of nowhere to prove me wrong. It seems like everyone else out there wants favors and judges your worth as a friend when you provide those favors. In contrast, my old roommate expected nothing in return from me. He was being a true friend. Now I have two weeks until I win the bet I made with myself. I think I should make bets like this more often. Unfortunately, my job forbids gambling, so I cannot go buy a lottery ticket. I am a babe in the woods, a diamond in the rough, an eagle among turkeys. Call me arrogant, but women ought to be lining up to meet me because there are few men out there with all of my qualities, and there is certainly no one out there like me. I think I might give this Experiment thing up entirely because it feels so utterly pointless. I would even go so far as to say that I no longer care, but choosing despondency as an acceptance of fate only pisses me off more. |