when i was a year old, i moved from tuscaloosa to cullman. i couldn't tell you a single thing about living in tuscaloosa, because i don't remember a single moment of it.
when i was 9, i went back there for my first alabama football game. i can tell you a lot about that day. i can tell you my exact thoughts when i first stepped from the concourse out into the bowl of bryant-denny. i can tell you how it was homecoming. how eli manning was the rebels' quarterback, and how alabama won 42-7. i can tell you where we sat, and about the cute family in front of us, and the drunk ole miss fan who threw a plate out the sunroof of his limo on the way home. i became the child that got alabama football media guides for her birthday, and read them cover to cover 97 times.
when i was 17, i made my first visit to auburn university. it was august, and so hot. campus was crowded and bustling yet always strangely slow and calm. when i told people i was considering auburn, they'd always say, "oh, well i'm sure you'll convert soon," as if you could just switch that easily. maybe someone who didn't really care could do that, but definitely not me. if you switch that easily, you were never really a fan to begin with, because that's not how sports work.
when i was 18, i moved to auburn. in august, just under a year after my first visit, i moved into the dorm and made new friends and quickly realized auburn was where i was supposed to be. i waved my shaker in jordan-hare on saturdays, but i never really meant it. it was fun– SEC football is always fun– but it didn't really mean anything to me.
i didn't get homesick until january. after being home an entire month for christmas, i fell hard back into my home routine. i left to return to auburn on my dad's birthday, and it was raining, and it was the worst. then the very next night, i got to watch alabama win the national championship, in what has become my most favorite alabama game of my lifetime. i sat in a room full of auburn friends and proudly wore the alabama jersey i've had since elementary school, because there wasn't a single thing any of them could say to me. they were all sassy about how lsu had already beat alabama once and "haven't we already seen this game" and then by about halftime, they all shut up. the next morning, i walked half a mile in the rain to my car (joys of freshman parking) and drove to academy, where i bought a national championship t-shirt. shockingly, there wasn't a huge demand for those in auburn. i still smile every time i drive by that store. i wasn't so homesick after that.
when i was 19, i watched Roll Tide/War Eagle, the excellent 30 for 30 doc, and thought, wow, they should have interviewed me for that. this is me making myself available for the sequel.
when i was 21, i started working in the auburn athletics department. that's a whole blog post in itself, but i'll leave it at this: a chapter i never could have predicted, a chapter i loved and didn't love, a chapter that taught me exactly what i don't want to do with my life and a little bit about what i do want to do. i stood on the sidelines for an iron bowl, met charles barkley, learned a lot, and made some of the very best friends. the job allowed me to leave my mark on auburn's campus in a very real, very tangible way, in the form of stadium cups and outfield walls and whole list of other projects that were tough and time-consuming and also wildly worth it.
to auburn, with all my love. thanks for taking care of me. thanks for the very best memories. for the slow, hot summers and gorgeous fall days, and for one impossibly fun snow day. thanks for not kicking me out abruptly in may, but rather, letting me have one more semester and ease my way out. i drove out of town for the last time on january 8, exactly four years after that one homesick day at the end of christmas break freshman year.
what a difference four years can make.