My world is a little darker now, my father – Jerry Collins Evans, Sr. – has passed on from this life and is in heaven with his parents now.
So instead, I will simply share this that I wrote several years ago.
When I was in 6th grade, I attended a small Christian school in Coral Gables Florida. For part of the year, we had a substitute math teacher whom I remember absolutely nothing about except for the fact that he was a University of Oklahoma football fan. As luck would have it, that year, Oklahoma was coming to Miami to play the Hurricanes, and this particular teacher was beside himself with delight.
One day he spent almost half of class regaling us with the stories of this years Oklahoma team, how good they were and what an exciting game it would be. He usually followed these oratories with comments like, â”While Miami doesn’t have much of a team this year, if you get a chance to go to this game it will be great just to see Oklahoma play.” To him, just the exhibition of them running out on the field was enough to warrant the price of the ticket. It was positively mesmerizing just listening to him talk. Of, course, being good 6th grade students, we did everything we could to keep him going under the misguided assumption that the less we covered in class, the less that we would be tested on.
Time passed, maybe a day or two. I suffered the public humiliation of being in the 95% of the class that would not be able to attend the game. It was a nightmare of 6th grade epic proportions. Then one night, again at the dinner table, Dad looked at me and told me that he had managed to arrange for a substitute director for rehearsal and while he had scolded his choir members for missing rehearsal for better reasons, we were going to the game! My mind reeled. I was floating on cloud nine. I couldn’t believe it. I was actually going to my first football game. I couldn’t wait to tell the class at school the next day. I was now part of the elite 5% who were actually going to the game solely on the teacher’s recommendation. It was wonderful, life was good.