A Thousand Words

Yes, I was at that Packers game on Saturday. The playoff one, where the Packers trounced their opponents, and it snowed...a lot. But don't take my delay in writing about it as a lack of enthusiasm. I've just been racking my brain to come up with a way to describe the experience that would do it justice.

You've probably heard the "snow globe" comparison by now. And it was, I suppose, Iike being in a snow globe that had just been shaken up (minus the motion sickness, thank goodness). So I wanted to find a different way to describe it -- you know, since I'm in the writing profession and all. What I've come up with so far is this:

Remember how in Star Wars when the Millennium Falcon jumps to hyperspace, the stars would move toward you against the blackness of space? Well, the snow was kinda like that. Looking up into it, the flakes looked like thousands of little stars against the dark sky. But instead of becoming a faster-than-light blur, they slowly ambled down. And the sky was just full of 'em. A single streetlight does a fair job accentuating falling snowflakes; a stadium's worth of lights makes the mass affect absolutely incredible.

Now, you may ask, where are the photos of said amazing event? Well, back in Plover, in our memory card that we accidentally left in my parents' photo printer. Although really, I think it was one of those things where the visuals are only part of it. The other part was the feeling in the air. It was a magical game, and everyone there knew it. That all became clear sometime during the third quarter.

By then, the Packers were well ahead, so everyone in the crowd was feeling good. It had been snowing steady for awhile, but midway through the third quarter, the sky just opened up and the snow started coming in huge flakes and FAST. You could no longer see the other side of the stadium and the field was a blur of white. It was piling up on people's shoulders and hats. And the towel that was supposed to be keeping my seat dry while I stood up was covered in wet snow. But in the middle of it all, everyone in the stands was just looking around themselves and grinning. Those can't-help-yourself kind of grins. Those I-can't-believe-I'm-here sort of grins. And I was grinning, too. I didn't even mind that much when the cheering fan in front of me knocked some of my ice-cold Guinness down my neck (and on a side note, it's the only time I've ever had my beer get colder in the cup).

One of my favorite things about football is that they play in mud, snow, freezing rain, you name it, and I always thought those games looked so cool. Well, Saturday, I got to experience one of those games firsthand, and it was perfect, just perfect.