NaBloPoMo 24: First Pro Football Game

I went to my first pro football game today, isn't it about time? I'm not really a big football fan anymore. I watched it religiously when I was a kid, still living at home with my parents. My Dad and I were big Chicago Bears fans, and so I was looking forward to going today, even if I have kind of forgotten a lot of the rules.

No purses!?
The news was broken to me just last night that we are not allowed to carry our purses into the Edward Jones Dome, in St. Louis. This was a challenge for me only because I wore yoga pants with  no pockets, and my ugly "Bear Coat," which is really a sweater. A pocketless sweater. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, though: I walked in with my phone and reading glasses in my bra, a portable hairbrush tucked into my sock, and a lip balm in the palm of my gloves.

(You can see what kind of sports fan I am, when I start my post with a paragraph about my purse.)

The lines to get into the stadium were very very long, and chaotic. It seemed to me that this was the first time that 60,000 fans had ever shown up to watch a football game there, and they were completely unprepared. They open the doors at 10:30, and the games starts at noon. We arrived 45 minutes early, were standing here several minutes after 12, listening to news of the first touchdown being scored inside the dome. Every person entering had to be scanned, manually, at the door. I understand the need for that kind of security in this day and age, but it doesn't seem like they have their chops on this, yet.

That said, I was completely awestruck when we finally got  inside. There is an entire football field in this building! The dome seats 66,000 people, and in comparison to all of us, the field seemed almost small.

We had decent seats, pretty close to the field, which was great.

Unfortch, this guy was sitting in front of me, so every time the scrimmage (did I use that term correctly?) was out end, I had to lean around him to keep an eye on the game. Man, what I wouldn't have given for a pair of scissors to clip off that pompom.

Our Bears lost, in the end, but I still loved watching the game in person today. And kudos to Clint who was so patient, when I asked him, about one million times, "what is going on? What is that flag for? What was the penalty for? What are they doing? How many time outs? How long is the break between quarters?" and admittedly, "who has the ball now, Rams or Bears?"

Here we are, feeling sorry for ourselves that our team lost. (And yes, I did buy that shirt especially for today.)