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"That feeling that comes on Friday night? You’re gonna miss it. It doesn’t come back often. So you seniors that are focused on college, on your work after high school, on what you’re gonna do next... you got plenty of time for tomorrow. But these tonights are going by fast. You focus on tonight. This is about the guys in this room that care about each other that know there’s only so many more of these nights left…"

-The Boys of Fall

            High school football games still baffle me, with the exceptional possibility of injury on every down, with the brute strength of sophomores who during the school week can’t figure out their algebra homework, with the complexity of play-calling and the quiet fuming of the coaching staff. High school football games were the highlight of my life, up to this point, with the screaming and the laughter and the girls.

            And then now, after going back, after seeing these nights as an outsider, as an older alumnus (“Do you even go here?”), I can’t be so sure. Friday nights like these were what shaped me as a person, which partially gave me the strength and the confidence I needed to act in front of people, to speak in front of people, to share my poetry and inner thoughts in front of people. The stadium lights seem to be flickering at a dimmer light and the fumbling wide receivers seem to be moving just a little slower, as if I had over-hyped and more-than-remembered the past weekends and memories.

            But some of my old (weird word to use) classmates are here, familiar faces in a crowd that surprisingly I do not recognize. And as we laughingly toss the beat-up football around, I can’t catch more than half of their perfect spirals, I can’t throw anything except wobbly weak passes, and I remember, for good this time, that some things just never change.