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Adventures in Lincoln
Every year, the debate resurfaces about whether to hold the Nebraska high school football championships at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln or at a high school stadium. While a high school stadium would allow more hometown fans to attend the game, a trip to Memorial Stadium is very motivational and inspirational for the team, the staff and the fans.
(For McCook, I think it's nearly a moot issue. A view from the press box at Memorial Stadium provided a very telling view: McCook looked to have twice as many people in the stands as Omaha Skutt.)
Having thought about which would be better, I'm still torn because, as usual, either provides plenty of excitement for me and my family as evident by last weekend's trip to Lincoln for the championship game.
I must admit that I missed the first quarter of the McCook/Skutt football game, including the game's lone scoring drive, as I wandering around the south end of the stadium. I was not trying to avoid the game, but rather trying to enjoy the game by diverting my children's attention with popcorn.
With a 4-year-old and 2-year-old in tow, I spent the first 15 minutes of last Saturday's game searching for a concession stand only to realize that officials had one stand open on each side -- the west and east sides -- and only one entrance into the concourse to reach those stands. I'm assuming the ticket-taker at the southeast entrance to the stadium was laughing with me and not at me as I wandered past him three times trying to find my way to the concessions or, at the very least, back to our seats.
On the plus side, I now know that a football team can make a 54-yard push down the field in the time it takes little two-year-old legs to climb 34 sets of stairs in Memorial Stadium.
But the most excitement for my family from last weekend's game actually came after the game was over.
Returning to the hotel after the game, the 2-year-old fell asleep, probably from all the walking around the stadium in search of popcorn. While the remaining members of my family returned to one hotel room to finally have dinner, the sleeping toddler went with Grandma to the other room to retire for the night.
Ideally, the story should be: The next morning, everyone woke up, got dressed and drove back to McCook. But that story got a little altered.
The 2-year-old was the one who woke up, but at 4 a.m. Determined to find his mom, he left Grandma's room, entered the hallway and started knocking on my hotel room next door.
I must admit that I was surprised to see my 2-year-old knocking on my door at 4 in the morning at a strange hotel room in Lincoln, not expecting to encounter this as a parent for another 15 or 16 years.
But I just let him in -- locked the upper child-proof locks which Grandma did not know were needed with this child -- and returned to sleep, not calling Grandma to let her know that I had a visitor because I didn't want to wake her.
It was hours later that the whole story emerged.
Grandma did wake up and became frantic was she found the 2-year-old missing. She leapt to her feet, scrambled out of the room, sans teeth or street clothes, and headed to the front desk.
All the worst scenarios in the world were flashing through her head about my son, such as falling in the pool, kidnapped by another hotel guest, wandering outside in the freezing cold through downtown Lincoln. After enlisting the help of two young men at the front desk with her fruitless search, she had come to one conclusion: She had to call the police.
As she returned to her room to begins the frantic calls, she realized she had not only forgotten her dentures but also her room key. Here came the front-desk workers to the rescue one more time.
At this point, she resigned herself to the fact that she must let us know in the next room that she was calling the police to report the child missing.
It also was at that point that she finally learned that the 2-year-old had been asleep next door the entire time. It had never dawned on her that the toddler would know where to go and or that I would hear him, but in the end he proved smarter than all of us.
So at least this story has a happy ending.
As for those two front-desk workers. Grandma got their names and sent them some compensation -- for dealing with a toothless, pajama-clad, old woman frantically searching for her grandson.