Tailgate Two!

I had a medical appointment scheduled for 8am on the day after Thanksgiving, which wasn’t something I knew you could do until the guy offered to book it for me. It wasn’t for anything urgent but I figured I’d have time around then and it would get me moving for the plans we had later that day, so why not.

And then I discovered – on Thanksgiving Day – that our plans were actually much earlier than I had thought so I had to move the appointment. It is not easy to reschedule an appointment on a holiday and I knew (or at least hoped) that speaking with an actual person was probably not going to happen, but eventually I found the proper phone number and left a message and hoped for the best. I told them – truthfully – that I had a family commitment that I couldn’t miss.

What I didn’t tell them was that this commitment was a tailgating party. Although in the end I think they figured it out.

Last year Lauren and her roommates decided to host a Parent Tailgating Weekend where they invited all of the various parents to join them and their friends for a festive afternoon of grilling, drinking games, and football, and I have to say that it was a lot of fun. We ate. We drank. I played my first ever drinking game (Boom Cup) and if I didn’t quite win then neither did I lose and I’ll take that. We even got tickets to see the game, which was terrible but we enjoyed it anyway. We had a very good time, and when your adult daughter invites you up for a gathering with her friends you can definitely count that as a parenting win.

So when Lauren and her roommates decided there would be a Second Annual Parent Tailgating Weekend, we were all in for it.

Except that this happened much later in the season than last year, so rather than the crisp fall day of the first one it was very much Winter In Wisconsin, with a high temperature that day somewhere in the teens Fahrenheit (which is Very Cold in Celsius). This was heightened by the fact that the game was much earlier in the day. Last year’s game started around 3pm, which meant we could slide up there around lunchtime and still have time for – hypothetically speaking – medical appointments in the morning. This year, however, game time was 11am and if you know this particular campus you know that nothing says College Game Day like alcohol consumption at 8 in the morning. It beats medical appointments, anyway.

We didn’t get there until around 9, though, because we are old and because we had to weave around the fenderbender that happened right in front of us as we neared the stadium and also because we stopped to pick up two dozen fresh bakery donuts for the festivities. For a reasonable fee we found a place to park – right behind the house were this was happening – and as parents and Old People we celebrated the fact that that the tailgate had been moved indoors.

There was plenty of food and all of it was good. The parents of the actual hosts for this event run a barbeque restaurant somewhere and brought a pile of tasty meats. And in true Wisconsin fashion, there were plenty of beverages. I brought a bottle of homemade Irish cream that disappeared pretty quickly, and at one point Lauren introduced me to something very tasty whose name escapes me now but which consisted of elderflower liqueur and champagne.

I also got to experience my first shot of Malort.

If you do not live near Chicago or its cultural basin you have probably never heard of Malort and in this you should count yourself lucky. It is a liqueur of sorts, one whose overriding flavor is “bitter” with a dash of “regret,” though it also includes an ever-changing blend of herbs and infusions such that no two bottles are ever quite the same so even within those parameters it is something of a guessing game. It’s the sort of rite-of-passage beverage that most people only consume on a dare and yet it is inexplicably popular in Chicago and I’d wanted to try it for a while now but purchasing an entire bottle of the stuff was just out of the question. And there it was!

It fully lived up to my expectations.

The living room had been cleared for action, and we joined in. It took me a while to find the range, but in the end Nolan and I very nearly won our game of Beer Pong, a game I had never played before despite being a proud graduate of three different universities, all of which had football teams at the time. Kim and Max actually did win their game.

Mostly we spent the time hanging out. Sometimes I was talking with the other parents.

I spent a fair amount of time talking with Anita’s grandmother, who has led a fascinating life.

And sometimes I was with Lauren and her friends, some of whom I have known since they were in middle school and some of whom I met at the party. They’re good people, and I enjoy talking with them.

It was quite a group.

By this point it was nearly game time so most of the college students went over to the stadium, where they watched the home team get pretty conclusively thumped by one of their main rivals. Kim and I took a quick look at the temperature (a balmy 18F by then, not including the gale force winds) and decided that our best option was to take in the game at a local bistro. Fortunately Maxim works as a bouncer at just such an establishment and he got us in. It was loud, crowded, and busy, which is why I suspect that when the medical office called me back they knew pretty much instantly where I was (or at least at what sort of establishment and event I was) but to their credit they didn’t flinch and we rescheduled my appointment without incident. Tailgating in Wisconsin is a hallowed tradition, after all.

Eventually we all ended up back at Lauren’s apartment where we warmed up for a while before Lauren, Maxim, Nolan, Kim and I headed out to an international grocery store because that’s the sort of people we are. From there we went to an actual local bistro for dinner in a much quieter and less frigid atmosphere.

Tailgate for the win!