The Severed Cortex

I picked Robert up Friday night around 4:45 just like we talked about last week. Our goal was to go watch a football game. OK, perhaps my goal was not completely altruistic; I wanted to go see Caruthersville play. As far as I can remember, Caruthersville has never played a St. Louis area team in a regular season game. This year they have played two and both opponents have been ranked in the top 10 of the Post-Dispatch small schools poll. Cardinal Ritter traveled to Caruthersville for the first one. Last night Caruthersville traveled to Festus.
Robert and I drove towards Festus via I-255. We talked about a couple of things and eventually that turned towards food. I kind of wanted some chicken wings, but Robert wanted pizza. As far as I'm concerned, there is no finer pizza in St. Louis than Fortels, but I also knew that the McKenzie Road location would be packed on a Friday night. I called Jay Watz for other options and he suggested one called Neighborhood Pizza across from Ronnie's.
We arrived at Neighborhood Pizza and settled on a pepperoni and sausage with New York style crust. There were coloring books there and Robert found one that had practice areas for the letters of the alphabet. Robert chose the letter K and while I thought it was a harmless at first, when he drew three of them next to each other and stopped, I wasn't sure what to do. Finally he picked it back up and wrote about 30 letter K's in both upper and lower case, and in both print and cursive. He then moved on to the letter L. The pizza arrived and wasn't too bad. Robert, for some reason likes the pizza bones more than the pizza. He ate 2+ pieces of pizza because he said he wanted to leave room for candy and popcorn. Did I mention that he saw the ring pops and everlasting gobstoppers I had stuck back in the console of the car.
We left South County for Festus and arrived just after the start of the first quarter. Robert watched a little but was more interested in the band. Towards the end of the first half Festus scored to take a 7-0 lead and we headed to the concession stand for popcorn and Gatorade. We got back to our seats in time for the halftime show which consisted of the crowning of the homecoming queen and a horrible rendition of the Beatles Penny Lane. Even Robert said the band sucked and he hoped that Caruthersville had a better band. I told him not to count on it.
During the second half, in which it was obvious that Caruthersville was outmanned in size, Robert's attention turned toward the little girl and boy sitting behind us. They ran together on the grass and the track and generally spent energy that was bursting to get out from all the candy they had eaten. I did not hear the little girl actually say it, but apparently the mother did; the little girl called Robert 'brownie'. You could tell that the mother was mortified. She did the right thing by explaining that you couldn't call people names based on the color of their skin and asked the little girl what would happen if Robert called her 'vanilla ice cream'. This is the point in the conversation where I became aware of the situation. Robert was standing in front of me and I asked him if he had told the little girl his name. He leaned around me and shouted, 'My name is Robert!'.
The kids went back to playing in the grass and I introduced myself. The father, Matt Fulbright I believe he said his name was, graduated from Caruthersville in 1999. He grew up in McCarty and knew some of the people I did like Nancy and Dan Faukner and of course Keith Jean. He now lives in St. Louis Hills and works as a sales trainer for Cintas, the uniform company. He seemed like a nice guy.
The game ended with Festus winning 20-6. I felt it was a good showing for Caruthersville against an obviously bigger and stronger team. Caruthersville only dressed 23 kids and many of them played both sides of the ball. I managed to see a couple of people from Caruthersville; Claire Hayden (although Hayden is obviously not her name now), and the Street family (Ted and Sue) with their daughter Ginny who is a couple years older than me. Ginny's sons Ted and Jake VanAusdall are the center and quarterback on the team. No one asked who Robert was, but there were plenty of strange looks. I'm curious to see how the gossip might spread back home.
Robert and I headed home and 5 miles outside of Festus he was asleep. I think next time we'll go on a hike and a picnic.