#notmyelement

             I spent my last weekend in Modesto.  To this agricultural town the water polo team ventures every year for a water polo tournament.  Driving along, one often gets whiffs of cow manure.  There is a small, nondescript downtown area, but mostly just an abundance of strip malls. 

             The hotel we stay at is nice, but has proved to be problematic in the past.  There is no elevator, so last year, we had to haul our gear upstairs including the cooler filled with food the team moms had so graciously brought us (there was a heck of a lot of food in there seeing as it takes a lot of food to feed a water polo team!).  The man at the front desk looks like Elvis.  The majority of other people staying at the hotel are over the age of 65.  The woman who works in the restaurant is never too happy to see us.  And lastly, I always devour many of the hotel’s complimentary puffy mints.  This place is a character unto itself.

            The pool we played our five games at this year was a high school pool.  So you could say that I spent the day at what some may call a “real high school.” As we walked past the full classrooms filled with high school boys and girls, I couldn’t help but feel as if we didn’t belong. Grace and I went to fill water bottles before the games began and unfortunately got stuck in the school’s passing period.  Kids ran this way and that way, whooping and hollering—I simply could not keep up with their pace.  We dodged students on our way back.  I felt like an ostrich caught in a heard of passing wildebeest in the expansive plains of Africa.  I was not in my element. 

            The team parents set up our Easy-Up tent by the football fields.  The stands were massive and could probably hold all of Paly and Castilleja combined.  In this little town, attending high school football games is the highlight of the week.  The football team hustled onto the fields and their coach yelled at them in a very deep, very manly voice as one might expect a football coach to do.  The occasional late straggler ran onto the field to join the other jocks.  The band marched around in a formulated pattern and banged their drums inordinately. 

Kids ran by the field in P.E. uniforms that one would expect to see in 90s movies.  Every piece of their uniform had the blank line where they were expected to fill in their names.  As they walked by chattering with their friends, cliques were obvious to onlookers such as myself.