Love, boys and small towns.

It has to be love that motivates someone to sit for two hours on a metal seat in November with an icy wind whipping down from the top of the bleachers watching a bunch of boys running a pigskin up and down the field. My husband really wanted to go. I knew he wouldn't go alone. Ergo, love. It was really cold. I was really cold, even with a blanket under me, a sleeping bag over and under my legs and three layers.

What made him want to go? Love. He is an old ex-high school teacher whose career started bangers and ended badly. The ending had nothing to do with his knowledge or his teaching ability. No, it was much more personal than that. Another story. A story about small towns and small town prejudices. It certainly did not make him feel good about himself however. Now he substitutes sometimes in this high school in our current small town. This one has prejudices too, but fortunately, they do not involve anything about him. He does a great job and the school is pretty packed with good kids who want to do well. They learned very quickly that he can and will help them to do that, and he helps them in a way that makes science fun and interesting. We get people walking up to us on the street to tell us how much their son/daughter thinks of him. Great. He likes to go to their football games. He pretty much knows all the players.

He likes to go also because these kids win. It's nice to back a winner. Raymond is a town of about 3600 people. The high school populaton is a few hundred, I can't tell you how many. A high percentage of the boys play football. Notre Dame is a Catholic high school in Calgary. It has about 1500 students. They were mostly undefeated in their league this year, maybe undefeated. The game wasn't exactly a rout, like the game with another Calgary high school last week in the quarter finals (64-0). The final score was 40 - 0. The stands were pretty full and most of the fans were Raymonds. Family - parents, aunts, uncles, cousins - and friends of players. Football fans who love to see Raymond win again these monoliths. It was a great game.

They made Raymond's offensive work pretty hard but Notre Dame couldn't get anything going offensively. They hardly got any first downs the whole game - did a lot of kicking on the third down. Most were poor kicks, almost like they were intentionally going for short kicks hoping to recover the ball. It never worked. Worked for Raymond once though. I think Notre Dame was confused by Raymonds tendency to run or pass on the 3rd down. That only didn't work a couple of times. Raymond didn't care, I think, because Notre Dame wasn't going anywhere anyway. There were some very gutsy plays - tackles flying through the air, passes and kicks blocked. It was great. Even I got into it. I'm a pretty good fan, but then I too know some of these boys from church. I visit teach one of their mothers.

I wasn't there when my husband went to talk to the boys, from our ward when they sat slouched in the big soft comfortable chairs in the lobby between meetings. I visualized it though, because I have seen it before. He would have told them what a great game they played last night. (A couple of them were stars.) He would have had his pride in them shining out of his eyes. They wouldn't be able to miss it. He told me he asked them about next week's provincial final and what they thought the Harry Ainsley team would be like. One boy said, "We'll handle them." He wasn't bragging, just quietly confident. These boys don't brag. My husband loved it. He loves them. Eat your heart out Nanton.