Friday night we went to the Timberwolves game and I did not pick a fight, though it was touch and go for a while there…
The seats were fan-freaking-tastic. Row G Lower Level… the players were what felt like inches away. Wally and Candyman (whom I liked to call “Kneesocks”) are gone and replaced by other people that I don’t find as interesting… the game was against Denver ,who are leading the playoff race.The game was expected to be very exciting – and it was….
EXCEPT.
Tip-off (is that what it’s called?) was a 7pm. Kory and I were in our awesome seats with our Grain Belts and our nachos at that moment. Somewhere are 7:30 – Guy From Texas and his Work Friend show up and plop down next to me. Guy from Texas has NO SENSE OF SPACIAL EXISTANCE and elbows me about 49 times until I haul off and elbow him back and which point he says, “Oh, I’m sorry ma’am.”, which was completely disarming because… he doesn’t apologize when he elbows me, but only when I elbow him? He and his Work Friend who clearly did not pay for these very expensive tickets and were, in fact, given them by whatever company they were here visiting… spent most of the game talking about NASCAR. *vomit* Yes, for God’s sake… NASCAR. These are quotes (VERBATUM!):
“My Daddy has had box seats at our raceway for 25 years!”
“Dadgummit!” (everytime the Twolves missed a basket)
I SWEAR TO GOD this 45-ish year old man referred to his father as “Daddy”. Honestly, I prefer the more concise, “Dadgum!” – but that’s neither here nor there….
Around 8:15 the drunk-early 50-ish women show up in the row behind us. I can’t explain why these women came to this game. They sure as hell weren’t there to actually watch any part of the game. They talked and laughed loudly during the ENTIRE game. They talked about surgeries they had, what kind of moisturizer works best and then one of them asked the other one if she had every seen “Grey’s Anatomy” and the other one said, “No, is it good?” and the first one goes, “Yes, would you like me to tell you what’s happened so far this season?!” and other woman gives an enthusiastic, “Yes!” …… and this is when I turn completely around in my seat and give them both a SCATHING GLARE, to which both women responded with a wide-eyed stare/flinching combo.
Several minutes of whispering go by…. I’m just boiling in my seat. The guy next to me elbows me again and the woman behind me kicks my chair for the 20th time. The women decide to not be swayed by my silent threat and decide instead to stage whisper to each other, which ends up being more distracting and annoying than if I’d just let them talk… and I end up listening to a recap of every single episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” since it came on the air.
I truly do wish that shit like this didn’t bother me to the degree that it does… because I ruin these things for myself, sometimes, but the fact is these tickets were $100 EACH and the women behind me and the Texas guy next to me all came within a breath me going Ninja Bitch all over them….
but I didn’t… and for Kory’s sake…. I eventually tuned them out and enjoyed the game…. at one point near the end, one of the women behind me put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Sorry, sweetie! I’ve been kicking your chair all night”… to which I did and said… nothing. I didn’t look at her or respond – which was new and different for me, as well — and ODDLY EFFECTIVE! She and her friend whispered about that for a while too… and I almost felt bad and then I remembered that not saying all the things I WANTED to say to her was actually something of a break-through for me and that she really was a rude pain the ass… so I let it go.
The game (oh yeah, the game!) was awesome. Tied almost all the way through – going into the end of the 4th the Nuggets were up by 4 and with only 30 seconds left it seemed really unlikely that we’d tie it up — a great steal and a KG dunk and the game is tied and everyone is screaming and high-fiving and howling…. (it is a Wolves game… howling is required) – we go into OT and we’re up! We’re down! We’re tied! We’re UP! We’re GOING TO WIN!…….Denver pulls off a miracle 3-pointer. Some Carmelo guy…. There are 3.4 seconds left on the clock….we are down by 1 pt… pass to KG… and he throws up a brick………game over…..Wolves lose… total bummer……
Despite it all, it was fun and we had a good time.
I think maybe next time, we’ll get the cheap tickets. I expect so much less from the people around me when I’m in the $12 seats…. and it doesn’t sting quite so much when they lose when you are in upper section Y – you can’t see the disappointment in the players faces.