Giant Steps
Written By Jeff Wagenheim
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The stadium is going crazy. I can feel the concrete-shaking jubilation even way out here. And when the public address guy's voice wafts up to us — the only two riders on the Gate C escalators — with a muted "TOUCHDOWN ... GIANTS!" I grip the hand of my 18-month-old son a little tighter. Man, do I wish we were in our seats so Aaron could experience all the hullabaloo of his first pro football game. So I could.
We're not arriving late. We were in the stands for kickoff. But almost as promptly as the Giants' defense, leakier than a loose diaper, surrendered the game's first score, my contented little sports fan turned cantankerous. He squirmed, he whined, and when I pretended not to notice, he stepped up the melodrama, tearfully turning his body away from the field, scrambling onto his knees on the fold-up seat, and making a shaky attempt to stand. I instinctively reached out for him, envisioning a welt under the eye where my gentle wife would slug me when I brought home her little treasure with a welt under his eye.
I pulled Aaron onto my lap, but he wasn't buying that. He summoned that superhero power that toddlers have to transform their bone structures into 1,000 pounds of jellyfish. With him squirming for freedom and me holding on like the last tackler between him and the goal line, he let out a screech that caused a cluster of ruddy-cheeked, roundish men in two-sizes-too-small Tiki Barber jerseys to turn toward us like synchronized swimmers. The meanest ones in the Olympic pool.
Maybe Sarah was right, I thought. Maybe the boy is too young.
My wife and I have been struggling with scenarios like this practically from the day Aaron was born. I'm always the one wanting to introduce the kid to something I'm excited about; Sarah is always the one wanting to wait "till he's ready." This is a woman who has spent half her life as an orchestral musician, yet she's never taken our son to Symphony Hall. "Not till he can sit still," she says. "It wouldn't be fair to me, to the audience members around us, to the performers, or to Aaron." My wife mixes her passions with patience. I'm one part passion, one part impulsiveness. Oh, and there's pride too.
Which is why I could not bring myself to leave this football game, even though it was turning into a wrestling match. If I arrived home too early, Sarah would know the outing had been the disaster she'd predicted it would be. She's not the kind to say, "I told you so," but having her know she had, uh, told me so and had been proven right (once again!) was something I didn't mind sidestepping. So what was I supposed to do with this crabby kid till the game was over?
Aaron had an idea. In the middle of a flailing spinal-twist yoga move, he sniveled, "Essolayer ... Dada ... want ... essolayer." It took me a moment, but then I recognized that he was repeating the word (sort of) I'd taught him as we rode up to our seats. I liked that. What I didn't like was his timing. I tried to negotiate — Can't this wait till the end of the game, big guy? How about halftime, pal? — but I had to give in when he made his counteroffer: He arched his back and let out a small but there's-more-shrillness-where-that-came-from shriek, a warning shot across the bargaining table. "Okay, okay," I said. "Now." As I made for the aisle, Aaron triumphantly perched on my shoulders, the collective sigh of relief from Section 128, Rows 20 to 30, was palpable.
So far, we've ridden down to ground level, back up, down again, up to the upper deck, back down. Then repeat, three times. We've missed two touchdowns, one by each team, or so I figure from the crowd's roller-coaster reactions. This is killing me. It isn't just that I'm missing the game, or even that this day I've always dreamt about — me, my son, and football — is turning into a nightmare. What's worse is that Aaron just doesn't get how intertwined Giants football is with his family history. It's our religion.
