Medora Goes To The Game

In the middle of the second quarter Medora said that she really liked the blue Ys on the Yale helmets. She announced it with a faint sigh, as if she had been making comparisons and had come to a decision. As I brooded over this disaffection, I was reminded that Alex Karras, the great Detroit Lion defensive tackle, had once told me that at the end of his illustrious career he had discovered his children were all Los Angeles Rams fans. They liked the way the horns curled up the side of the Rams' helmets. "To think," Alex said sorrowfully, "that I went out and slaved in the trenches all those Sundays to send my kids through school, getting my thumbs bent back so that I went like this in pain, 'AIEEE!' while all the time the kids were rooting for these guys across the line because they had nice-looking logos on their helmets designed by some interior decorator in Pasadena."

The wind didn't let up. Before the half, Yale scored, and then again just after the third quarter began. Medora and I didn't see the second score. We spent the third quarter standing in line for a hot dog. The facilities at Harvard Stadium are notorious. The rest rooms were described in the game program parody as being "located under sections 6, 7 and 31 of the Loeb Drama Center on Brattle Street." It went on to call the stadium itself: "The oldest standing concrete structure in the United States since the collapse of a similar arena 16 years ago. In its present condition, the Stadium is capable of supporting virtually 2,000 people."

When we got back to our seats Medora discovered that she had lost her good-luck koala bear. Apparently it had tumbled out of its tiny wicker basket. She didn't seem especially put out by its loss. "It was probably the bad-luck bear anyway," she said. She reached in her bag and produced the backup charm—the intertwined ivory fish—and in the hubbub around us I heard the faint whistle that was supposed to make the Yale players shrivel.

Medora's mittens had disappeared, too. I felt her shivering. She curled into the sheepskin coat I was wearing. I took her bare hands and rubbed them. On one of her thumbs I noticed a face she had drawn with a ballpoint pen; the back of her hand was decorated with a button with the word PUSH above it.

"What's this?"

She was embarrassed. "A push button," she said.

"What happens when you push it?"

She shrugged. "It starts engines and things," she said. She was still trembling.

I suggested, "Start up the heaters. Your mother will think I'm trying to kill you out here. Jiggle your feet. Then push the button for Harvard. They're not doing very well."

"Are they losing?" she asked.