A Religious Experience

** This was several years ago when a last minute trip to an Auburn game turned into something so much more**

This past weekend I made a last minute decision to attend the Auburn vs. LSU game that was being played in the great state of Alabama, or, as Brad calls it, “God’s Country.” My college roommate, Jenn, and I decided to drive down together the morning of the game; a game that started at 2:30 CST. Big mistake.

The first bad decision was waiting until 11:00 EST to leave when we were PAINFULLY aware that game day traffic in Auburn is a death wish. None the less, that’s when we left for our trip.


One thing to know about Jenn is that she's an atrocious driver. And that’s all the time, even when there is not the allure of alcohol and orange and blue shakers waiting at the other end of 85 South. So naturally driving at WARP SPEED did not help her ability to drive in a straight line. But we made it to Auburn and experienced surprisingly light traffic… until we came to our exit. We sadly realized that it would take us about as long as a trip to the DMV to get to the tailgate: F-O-R-E-V-E-R.


As we slowly crept down College Street we realized all the things we could be doing with this time: writing a novel, running a triathlon, or climbing Mount Everest. And we became more and more depressed that our tailgating time was being eaten away and the fact that there was little to no chance that once we got to the tailgate we would even find a place to park. Trying to park a car on a game day in Auburn is equivalent to winning the lottery. Twice. But we had a plan. That plan may have involved parking illegally on a curb in front of a fire hydrant…. but that plan worked like a charm! We figure that parking laws, much like underage drinking, were merely “guidelines” according to Auburn’s legal system.


Jenn and I were meeting our other roommate from college, Amy, at her tailgate. Amy had tickets to the game, but Jenn and I had not yet committed our first born children to pay for season tickets, so, we were on the look out. We knew that we could count on the fact that if we batted our eyes and twirled our blond locks long enough we would magically find tickets to the game. And sure enough, we got tickets and saw the entire game. It was a very intense game and after a series of heart-attack-worthy-plays, Auburn pulled through for the win, but the real celebration began later that evening.

After we returned to Amy’s house, and had a “heart healthy” (and "sober") dinner of boiled peanuts, pizza, dinner rolls and spinach artichoke dip, we got beautified for a night on the town. If you have ever been to Auburn you know that the only place worth going to is Supper Club. Supper Club is Auburn’s night life. It’s a Southern Institution. A Legacy. And for all intents and purposes; it’s a dump. But we love it and there’s no place we would rather go.


Our little trio went to sit on the outside deck, listen to the band and talk shit about all the other girls there. Don't Judge.What we didn’t expect was such an obvious target. The band was playing “Summer of 69” - an upbeat oldie that everyone loves - and the crowd was full of half drunk college kids bobbing their heads to the beat. One of the kids had brought their mother who apparently was a big fan of this particular song and she got to the stage to dance.


She must have been in her late 50’s and was wearing a shorter-than-appropriate-for-her-age jean skirt, sneakers (no socks) and a tank top she obviously borrowed from an anorexic teenager that said “I (heart) AU.” She was THE ONLY person dancing and she looked like she was performing some sort of tribal mating ritual around in circles. She basically began to scare the drunks and fueled our shit-talking for the night. The dance resembled a chicken that was both drunk and retarded at the same time. At one point she tried to pull an innocent bystander onto the floor to dance with her and the poor boy looked like he was going to cry. Lucky for him, he soon had the opportunity to sit back down when a young man asked to break in…


I don’t know that there was any way I could have prepared myself for what happened next. This guy, somewhere in his early 20’s, must have had a John Travolta obsession from birth, and studied the dance sequence from Greece every day since he got his first leotard for Christmas in 1983. He had probably prepared for this night his whole life and tonight was his night. He challenged her to a dance-off. This dance-off included all the workings of a So You Think You Can Dance? audition episode. There was leaping, booty dancing, the worm, chest bumping, and some gratuitous hip grinding. And Mr. Raunchy McBootyShake even used jazz hands. I have never laughed so hard. It was MAGICAL, and I don’t think I could ever do it justice, or see anything like it ever again. And the funniest part was the fact that this was the highlight of that lady’s LIFE. I don’t know if she was hanging out with her daughter at the bar to try to re-live some of her college days, or just to piss off her shrink, but either way she must have had a religious experience that night. She danced like this was her last chance to ever dance again. And that guy took white boy dancing to a whole new level.


And as I watched them, through tears because I was laughing so hard, I wished that I had just spent the extra money to get a freaking camera phone so that I could capture the essence of the dance-off for all to enjoy. But, alas you’ll just have to imagine it, or donate some money to me for a camera phone. Either way.