Five years ago or so, the Dillard's in my hometown shut down. The mall was already failing, and had been for many years. Dillard's had seen the writing on the wall, and they liquidated their location here. I had come to Boulder to visit my daughters, and we drove out to this town to pick the carcass of the store. I had hoped to find my silverware pattern, but the clearance sales had been going on long enough (a few weeks) that all the good stuff like fancy home goods were gone. We spent hours rifling through a large store's worth of clothing, though. There were no "6 items or less" limits on how much you could bring into a changing room with you. Everything had to go, and they wanted you to carry out as much as you could possibly hold in your arms. Between the three of us, we left with about seven or eight giant bags of clothing, and each bag was stuffed full. If we had paid full retail price, this would have run into the thousands. But if you added up our total receipts it cost us at most six or seven hundred dollars. I still wear most of the things I bought that day, weather permitting, and the girls still have favorites from that trip too. But there was one thing I bought that I put away for later use. I left the tags on it, and wrapped it in a plastic bag, and it has moved with me through two or three address changes completely unused. It was a black and gold sequined poncho, that probably cost me about eleven dollars. When I found it, I laughed at the old-lady-ness of the thing. I said I was going to save it for my golden years, when I was going to be the goofy old alumna at the bowl game spirit luncheon. I pictured myself in my late 50s or early 60s, wearing my poncho, sitting at a long table, clapping my hands while band kids young enough to be my grandchildren played the fight songs.
I spent more than an hour today digging through my closets, trying to find the bag that held that poncho. I've stopped putting off the "someday I will" crap, and started doing the things I've thought I needed to wait for. I got my CU Buffs tattoo, I dyed my hair bright purple, and tonight, I wore my black and gold sequined poncho to the Boulder Theater, to watch the Alamo Bowl on a big screen with 250-300 other fans. We had high hopes for tonight, but I have a lot of experience watching these Buffaloes in post-season play. I know better than to expect anything. I've been disappointed before, and I was disappointed tonight. You'll notice I did not talk smack leading up to tonight. CU's opponent was our old Big 8 / Big 12 opponent OSU, who have traditionally had very solid teams. We were ranked very close to each other. And I know our bowl game record is actually pretty dismal. Tonight was no exception. We were late arriving at the theater, and by the time we got inside, we were already down 3-0. The crowd in the theater was still positive, and we cheered when a few good plays happened. But they were few and far between, and our players kept ending up on the ground with trainers surrounding them. As the night wore on, the crowd thinned and my BAC went higher and higher. It's a very bad night when I leave a game early, and we stuck it out until midway through the fourth quarter when CU scored their first points of the night.
I very nearly had a big party at my house for this game. I am so glad we decided to let a different venue do the hosting. I didn't want to clean, and I didn't want to have a whole bunch of people here to entertain. If I had held the party, I might have done something crazy like bought a second television to have upstairs, and then I'd be on the hook for an additional fee to DirecTV for more equipment in the house. The way I look at it, going to the Boulder Theater saved me hundreds of dollars in the long run, not just the fatigue of cleaning, cooking, and hosting. Not sure where I may re-appropriate that money. Not going to go out and buy more sequined ponchos, though. This one ought to get me through the rest of my bowl game parties, from now until the rest home days.
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