my parents are traitors

When I was a sophomore in college our K-State football team went to the Big 12 Championship. So my sister and I flew to St. Louis, stayed with some friends of my parents, ate out a lot and went downtown to watch the big game. All the excitement, all the Purple prowling around, we KNEW we were going to win. Really, this was just a quick stop on our way to the National Game.

Then, in overtime, we lost. We were crushed.

So my sister and I, along with the friends of my parents (who were our friends, too, really) morosely rode down the escalator with Aggies all around us, crowding us, sucking the very air we were trying to breathe, all the while making their annoying "Whoop" sound. I don't know how to replicate that sound, but apparently it's taught to them before they're officially enrolled, they all know how to do it, and in a huge stadium that has suddenly become very small with all those Aggies crowding around you, that "Whoop" will just about send you over the edge.

I'm over it. And no, a few years after that event I did not tell an Aggie who went to my church in Wichita, Kansas, that that was one of the worst nights of my life. Especially not right before he told me he was at that very game and it was one of the best nights of his life.

Fast forward to 2008. My parents live in Texas, outside of Austin, in a quiet neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac. And who are the only neighbors with whom they share a yard? The quarterback from the Aggies! The quarterback who crushed my team's dream of going to the National Championship! If they merely shared a fence with this quarterback and his wife I would think "Well, what can you do. You can't always choose your neighbors." But my parents love these two. They go to dinner with these two. Let me say that again: They go to dinner with these two. They sit around, at The Oasis, and chat over dinner.

Traitors.

(Mom and Dad? I'm only joking. Well, sort of. =) ).