Volunteer Nation

By the time BayMarin got off the ground (as described in my last post), Mimi and I were officially engaged and actively planning for a December wedding. I tried to prepare her for what lay ahead by taking her to see my beloved alma mater, the University of Tennessee, play a football game in Southern California. UT was slated to face Colorado in the “Kickoff Classic” game that would launch the season, and I saw this is a unique opportunity to indoctrinate Mimi in the ways of the Volunteer faithful.

Thus far, she had proven doggedly resistant to my efforts to interest her in sports, having alternated between knitting and reading a book during an Oakland A's/Baltimore Orioles game I had taken her to a few weeks earlier. Thinking she might have a soft spot for the Orioles after growing up in Maryland, Mimi burst my bubble by stating flatly, “Their games always screwed up parking in my neighborhood.” I found it disturbing that Mimi valued convenient parking above the fortunes of her hometown team, but hoped for better results with football.

Once at the stadium in Anaheim, Mimi marveled at the throng of Tennessee fans who surrounded us, while I spent the first half grousing that “We've only got 10 or 15 thousand people here—you’ll never be able to get the full effect!” Certainly, the crowd was more subdued than the 100,000 die-hards who crowded into home games in Knoxville, but Mimi was still put off by their zeal. When the Vols quickly fell behind by two touchdowns, one man behind us repeatedly instructed Tennessee's coach to “Get your head out of your ass!” before going on to provide such helpful tips as “We're down by 14—ever hear of throwing the damn ball?!”

While impressing me as a voice of reason, this fan’s behavior seemed to diminish Mimi's enjoyment of the game, so I thought it best to keep my own coaching tips to myself. In the end, Tennessee was able to rally and salvage a 31-31 tie, but I could see that my dreams of converting Mimi into a Vol fanatic were hanging by a thread.

Shortly after returning home, we began premarital counseling with a favorite Golden Gate professor who had agreed to perform our wedding ceremony. The first thing he asked us to do was write an essay describing our expectations for marriage. I can no longer recall the content of my essay, but after our experience in Anaheim, I'm sure there were no visions of Saturday afternoons spent together watching UT football and yelling at the TV.