I’m only about eight weeks late blogging about this. But hey, why not. 🙂
Back in late October I made my first-ever visit to Ann Arbor, to hang out with Alex for the weekend. After I got there we went to dinner at an Irish pub downtown called Connor O’Neill’s. The place was packed, and had quite a few Penn State fans there (the Penn State at Michigan game was that weekend). There were occasional “We Are” cheers while we were there, but they weren’t very loud and a bit halfhearted, so we thought the place was maybe one-quarter Penn State fans. Right before we left the pub, I shouted “We Are!” as loud as I could, and we were both surprised to hear about two-thirds of the pub shout back “Penn State!” So I did the full cheer, with three “We Are!”s and then the “Thank you!” “You’re welcome!” call and response at the end. We got outside and Alex said, “Wow, you really can lead a cheer!” You betcha!
And then later that night Alex gave me my first guitar lesson, teaching me the opening chords to “City of Delusion” by Muse on his electric guitar. 🙂 I’d never played a chord on a guitar before, so it was tough to get my fingers to do the right things on the frets. Playing guitar’s a bit harder than it looks! I would like to learn how to play guitar at some point though, at least a little bit.
On Saturday was the Penn State-Michigan football game, and it was the first game either of us had been to in Michigan Stadium (it was my first Penn State road game as well). We tailgated with a several people from Alex’s department (plus others), in a parking lot across the street from the Michigan Marching Band practice field. I was the only Penn State fan at this particular tailgate, but they were welcoming to me. For any other Penn State fan that’d walk past, however, they’d all shout a coordinated “3, 2, 1, BOOOO!” It was kind of funny actually, and the PSU fans were good-natured about it. Other than some scattered showers making things cold it was a fun tailgate. I still prefer the tailgate setup at Penn State though, out in the grass fields, with tailgaters as far as the eye can see, rather than a few isolated tailgaters in a random paved lot in a city. The other odd thing was that everyone was tossing their empty bottles onto the grass by the sidewalk, instead of into a trash/recycling bag or something. Then someone explained to me why: there are people who walk around collecting empty bottles, because they can get 5 or 10 cents per bottle. I’m so used to throwing bottles and cans away in the free recycling bags that are handed out in the PSU tailgate lots, it felt wrong to toss these on the ground deliberately.
Alex & I walked up to the stadium in a sea of yellow (and no, it’s not “maize,” it’s yellow). Alex had bought two Michigan shirts for us to tease me a bit (since it was a “Maize-Out”), but I wore my white Penn State shirt instead. Before I left State College, Alex told me, “Leave your white and blue at home, there’s no need, I just bought two Michigan shirts for us!” Nice try, Alex. 🙂 There was just no way I could put that thing on when my team was playing THEM, haha. (I still have the shirt, by the way.) With all the bricks and the nice gates, Michigan Stadium looks a lot nicer from the outside than Beaver Stadium, but it’s not nearly as imposing as Beaver Stadium either. Alex & I had tickets in the corner of the end zone, in the opposite corner of the stadium from the Michigan student section (about 40 rows up from the field, about 40 rows below the Penn State visiting fan section). There were a few PSU fans scattered around, but basically I was surrounded by adult scUM fans. I was a very vocal PSU supporter, cheering loudly, waving my shakers, singing the fight song with the Blue Band, etc. It was kind of irksome to all the Michigan fans that I was surrounded by, probably especially because we were beating them so badly. There was some good-natured verbal back-and-forths that I was fine with. Still, I wasn’t taunting the Michigan fans or anything, I was just exuberantly cheering FOR Penn State.
[All of these pictures were taken by Alex, who borrowed his roommate’s camera. With the rain and the ban on bags of any type at Michigan Stadium, including camera bags, I didn’t bring mine along. Mine was acting up anyway and not taking good pictures.]
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Then in the 3rd quarter a guy who was originally sitting three rows in front of Alex & me snuck up to our row. I was sitting there, holding my shakers in my lap, when this guy (around 40 years old?) lunged at me from my right and was on top of me, trying to wrestle my shakers away from me. The struggle lasted for about 5-10 seconds before Alex and a bunch of the other Michigan fans around us lifted the guy off of me and started yelling at him. A few seconds later the guy tried to shake my hand and said, “This was all just in good fun, right?”, and everyone else started yelling at him again to go away and leave me alone. Alex asked if I wanted to leave (because he wanted to, after all this and the verbal abuse I was getting), but I said I wanted to stay and enjoy our victory over Michigan (at that point we led 32-10, and the final was 35-10). It was my first road game, and the first time Penn State won in Ann Arbor since 1996. So I was staying.
As the Michigan fans around us gradually left (it was cold and rainy and they were losing badly), they all came up to me and asked if I was alright, and said they hoped I realized that that behavior wasn’t representative of their fan base as a whole. However, there were two other jerks right behind us who were making awful and lewd comments to me and about me the entire game (mostly about how I was gay for having shakers), who a few times commented to each other about how disappointed they were in the other Michigan fans for their reaction to the guy attacking me. They thought I totally deserved it, that the guy was justified in jumping me. When others would call them on this, they’d try to defend the attack and their comments, to which everyone else would respond, “He paid for his ticket just like all of us did. Leave him alone and let him enjoy the game!” They were dismayed that their fans condemned the attack and they thought the other Michigan fans turned into a bunch of “pussies.” They said, “We may lose the game on the field, but we should never lose the stands. … This is what’s wrong with our country and our fans, nobody has any fight in them anymore.” I ignored those two jerks the entire game, though it was hard to do at times, especially since it seemed like they were practically leaning up pretty close to my ear to leer at me. I actually stayed and kept waving my shakers and cheering loudly partly to spite those guys, and not give them the impression that they intimidated me and chased me away.
In retrospect, perhaps I went a bit overboard with the shakers. At Penn State everyone has them, but at Michigan not too many of the PSU fans who made the trip had them. And Michigan fans don’t have any shakers or towels or anything. I probably wouldn’t have been attacked had I just been loudly cheering and not had the shakers, but still, that doesn’t excuse the behavior of those three jerks at all.
And that wasn’t all of the boorish behavior we witnessed that day, either. As we were walking back to Alex’s car, we were waiting to cross a street at an intersection when some old guy (seemed to be a Penn State fan) rolled down his window and yelled at Alex, “What the hell’s wrong with your friend that he’s hanging out with a Michigan fan?!” We were both speechless. So we got abuse from both sides, it was ridiculous. In the end the whole day’s events were enough for Alex to tell me that he no longer had any interest whatsoever in gaining an interest in sports. I don’t blame him.
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Physical assault aside, I really enjoyed my visit to Ann Arbor. It was fun to experience the tailgating and traditions at another school (even a huge rival school), to experience some of Ann Arbor, meet some of Alex’s friends, and to visit his new church. Ann Arbor really seems like a nice town, and I look forward to visiting several more times in the future while Alex is at Michigan.