It's amazing, really, that something so trivial as a football game can mean so much.
This time last year, I was in excruciating pain. Not just because my team got beat by their rivals, hitting rock bottom in a season where we were seconds away from being the #1 team in the country. Nope, I was in actual physical agony, squirming in my chair, trying to find a position that would let me stay comfortable for just a few minutes without acute pain shooting down my leg.
Today, I returned to Memorial Stadium in Berkeley for the first time since last season's downpour against USC. That was the day, as I stood in driving rain for three hours, that I started to realize the numbness in my foot and the discomfort in my back was not going away. Four months out of surgery, it was great to be able to walk freely around Berkeley and its cumbersome hills with a minimum of discomfort. We did quite a bit of walking too, because after the game, we walked to get yogurt, we walked to get dinner, we did some shopping at Comic Relief and Half Price Books on Shattuck. And while I am undeniably exhausted, I have confidence that with some rest tomorrow I'm going to be OK and able to do it again next season.
I won't say it didn't matter that we won - of course it mattered. They call it the Big Game for a reason. We lost 3 out of 4 of them when I was in school and 4 more after I graduated to make it 7 straight. But to get out there for a day in beautiful sunny weather, to watch my team run all over our hated rivals, to not have to worry about health or work or whether I'll have a job in two months - that made me happier today than I really deserved to be.
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