A tale of my football fall
Editors note: Lance Heidt is a photographer for News 3. He’s spending his fall traveling to see football games in three different cities. He’s sharing his experience with Channel3000.com.
There is a well-worn phrase we all know, “You can’t go home again.” I, like many others, try to disprove that proverb around once a year. Every year, I go back in the direction of what was once home — to see old friends, go to the table in the corner of that bar we practically rented space at, and once a year on one of these trips I go to a football game.
This year, it just so happens that in the span of four weeks I will be going to three football games. One is in a small city I will always think of as home in a way. One is a major metropolitan city that was my home for only an instant but at a time that changed the trajectory of my life. And one is in the city I now call home, where I don’t always feel like I fit in, but where I have made a life and a family.
The other part of going home, beyond geographic, is reconnecting with those friends that in your heart are with you every day but in reality will be with you for mere flashes throughout the rest of your life.
In the small city, I will be with a man who I still consider my best friend. He was the best man at my wedding, but since he tends to be a man of few syllables, staying in contact is tough. A few text messages back and forth is the only way we keep in touch. Except one football Saturday a year when we reminisce in a language only a bar stool can translate.
In the big city, I will be reconnecting with four friends who in spite of all being around the same age have lives that have differed greatly in terms of life and love. This weekend won’t be about the failures or even successes that the five of us have survived. It’s about recapturing that time in all of our lives before we realized what a torrent life was capable of unleashing.
In my home city, a college town, I will be with someone from my not-so-distant past.
One of those friends that live just far enough from right around the corner that you forget to say his name even though he is always on the tip of your tongue.
This is my football fall.
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