Yet Another Cultural Experience

...Waiting in line for two hours for ticket to a football game.

This morning I headed up to the Russel House at 10:30am to get in line for tickets. Usually I wait maybe 5 to 15 minutes. Today, it was almost 2 hours. This year the tickets have been running out around 1 or 2pm, but getting there at 11am is no problem. But as I got in line and saw the mattresses, coolers, chairs and trash, I realized people had been camping out. I heard people in line talking about friends who had gotten up at 7am to get in line. A girl in front of me was skipping a test for this, and lots were skipping class.

But even with all the students crazy and willing to do anything for their tickets, and news crews walking around (I think they wre there about the fire in NC where 6 USC students died), the line gets a little boring. Thankfully I had Tracy on the phone for half an hour. Then my roomie Sydney got in line with me, and a little later Josh, though he was only able to stand with us for about 45 minutes, minus a few when he went and grabbed lunch. It was crazy cold out (maybe 50 degrees, which is cold for us) - we can finally wear scarves, boots and hats. Some people saw the sunshine, thought it was warm, and threw on shorts and flipflops. You are allowed to bring two student ID cards, so I was able to hold Josh's when he left for work.

When we were almost there (had about 45 min left) a guy came by and mentioned that he saw there was only one box of tickets left. I was getting all nervous because so many people had been cutting in line with friends, and most people were carrying two IDs. I had observed from very early on that the line was oddly growing rather fatter than shorter. But we made it. And even if they had been out of tickets we would have had to stand in line anyway to get our cards swiped to get us into the lottery for tickets to the Clemson game.
Being a football fan is complicated.

I can now see why everyone here hates Spring semester because there is no football - that's all people care about here. At least Josh and I are two of the 8,000 students who will have one less boring Saturday.