Chapter 56: Seeing, and Avoiding, Police

Thursday, November 17, 1983

A bunch of us (Angie, Paige, Jas, Mark, Morty, Emily, Gene, Sue, Amit, Sheila, Megan, Calvin, Jess, Carole, and I) took off right after school, heading for a Chinese buffet near The Summit. We had plans tonight, after all, and grabbing a bite to eat seemed like a really good idea.

Two years ago, this group would’ve been nearly unthinkable. I’d perhaps said all of a sentence or two to Jess, and almost all of the others had been in the same boat. The one who had, Sheila, wouldn’t have imagined a casual dinner with Jess included. Megan had been a freshman and nowhere near brave enough to date Calvin. Gene had been dating Angie, while Sue hadn’t been at all ready to date. Meanwhile, Jas and I had just started to fall for each other. My time with Sheila, Sue, Jess, and (what there’d been) Paige and Megan was still to come.

For most of the group, this was their first big concert outing. A few of the others had seen an older band or two with their parents and, of course, Jas, Angie, Paige, and I had seen Simon and Garfunkel (also an ‘older band’ by high-school-kid standards) in Chicago, sans parents.

Many of them really didn’t know what to expect, and we could only give vague guidance. I’d never seen The Police live before, and I could hardly share tales of the rock concerts I’d attended in college and beyond.

We headed over to the Summit after dinner. The parking garage was the same one where I’d parked for the fateful McBride deposition, though we were at the other end. We joined the line of cars heading in and parked fairly close together, then grouped up.

I handed out tickets to everyone (including to those who hadn’t yet reimbursed me), and then we headed in. We’d wound up towards the front of the first section in the stands, with our seats in two rows. Perhaps not as nice as floor seats, but we’d have a great view of the stage, and they were reasonably priced for what they were.

Angie, Cammie, Paige, and I had talked about alcohol in advance. We’d had beer at Simon and Garfunkel, which had gone just fine. In retrospect, perhaps that was a silly move. If we had been caught, we could’ve wound up in jail far from home and gotten Northwestern very upset with us. Nevertheless, it’d gone fine, and the odds had been that it would always have gone fine (which meant that it might not have been silly at all). Most stadium beer vendors have zero interest in calling the cops. They just don’t want to get busted themselves.

In any case, we’d decided not to partake ourselves and to discourage the others from partaking. Mark and Morty were our first test cases. Emily was just fine with it, but we weren’t. It turned out that Jess wasn’t either, and she was more vehement than we were.

We made the point that it would be really dumb to screw up our very first concert in Houston by getting arrested and needing our parents to bail us out. They backed down, acknowledging our point was quite sound. I suspected one or two others were more in their camp than ours, but everyone behaved themselves.

This was all going to change quickly as we became legal. Once we did, it wouldn’t matter to most of us when the law changed and we became underaged again. That genie would be out of the bottle for us and nothing would put it back. I could hardly say anything too strong, not after Simon and Garfunkel.

I’d never had any problem getting beer in Austin, and I doubted it’d be any harder in College Station. I knew I could handle it, too. Angie swore that she could, and I was pretty sure she should know. Jas? Paige? We’d have to find out when we got there, but the odds were very good that Jas, at least, would be just fine.

With that settled, we browsed the souvenirs and got sodas. Nearly everyone wound up with one of the tour t-shirts. My guess was that we’d all be wearing them at school tomorrow. Well, all of us except for Jess — she’d be in her cheerleading outfit, it being a game Friday.

The concert itself turned out to be very, very good. It was very well produced, and they played two quite substantial sets along with two encores. There were some cool sing-alongs, there were moments of awe at some of the better light-show moments and some of the more intense moments of a few songs, and there were those moments when it was simply amazing to be together with so many people all loving the thing they were doing.

I had no regrets over missing the show in Chicago, even though it might well have been better than this one (but, of course, I’d never know). We never would have gone to both, and Simon and Garfunkel was a once-in-two-lifetimes trip for me. It might have been an easier concert to sell to our parents, too.

That said: this was truly a great concert. It wasn’t the best I’d ever seen (there were a few contenders for that honor, and this wasn’t as good as any of those). Still, in some ways, it was, in the same way those had been. All of those were special as much for who was there as for the performances, and this was perhaps the only concert this group would attend together. Almost certainly, we’d think back on this in ten or twenty years and remember just how cool it was that we’d been there. Also, the groups who had attended those other concerts would never exist in this universe.

Angie, thank goodness, had brought a camera with her. We got some people to take pictures of us, both in the lobby and at our seats. Of course, we wouldn’t know if they were any good until much too late (only I knew how spoiled we’d been twenty years from now!), but most likely they’d be fine.

We’d have to make copies for everyone. Mom would want a set, and probably some other parents would, too.

Friday, November 18, 1983

Another day, another stadium. This time we were at the Astrodome for the area championship. Marshall had warned me about Sterling, our opponent. I had to hope that it’d be a clean game. Also that Memorial would win, but I’d much rather Memorial lose than have someone face a major injury, especially the sort that would derail a college career.

As always, it was interesting watching Jess performing in the Astrodome. She looked so tiny and so very far away in the enormous space.

The game started off slow. Neither team could do much of anything in the first quarter. There were only two first downs and each team punted three times.

Connie was on the field three times, too. Two were Memorial players, one was a Sterling player. All three wound up trotting off the field under their own power, waving to the crowd, thankfully.

The second quarter started with Memorial backed up to their own five, facing third and fifteen after a penalty on the previous play. Graham took the snap, barely avoided being tackled for a safety twice, then put up a perfect pass to Andy, who was just hanging out around our forty-yard line with no one close. That put us up 7-0.

If anything, that increased the number of trips Connie made to the field. I had no real doubt that Sterling was trying to knock a few people out of the game. Fortunately, it wasn’t working, though there were a few near misses.

Late in the second quarter, one of the refs headed to their sideline and said something. No one but the ref and their coach might ever know what it was, but the injuries slowed.

We picked up snacks and soda (no beer!) and hit the restroom during halftime, hoping the second half would be no worse, and perhaps better.

Memorial got the ball on the opening kickoff. On the first play, Graham pretty much repeated the same throw to Andy, only from the twenty instead of inside the end zone. Fewer yards gained, but we were up 14-0.

That didn’t quite take the wind out of Sterling, but it certainly changed the game. We scored again before they got their first touchdown, then added a field goal late to make the final score 24-7.

That meant we’d be back here a week from today to watch Memorial face either Aldine or La Porte. I had no idea how good either of them was, but they’d play tomorrow, and the winner would be back here next weekend.

Still four more games to go, if we could get that far.

We would have ever-increasing numbers of college recruiters at every game from here on out. While they look at your whole season, of course, tonight certainly couldn’t have hurt Andy (nor Cal, who had seven tackles, two for loss). Hopefully it helped!

By the time the game ended, it was late enough that we simply opted for dessert (pie at the House of Pies, a West Houston institution) and sleep.

Saturday, November 19, 1983

I slept late, then did a bunch of homework, before heading to Kyle’s office. When I got there, he was standing in the lobby and talking to a guy who was probably about thirty or so. Both of them were dressed fairly casually for professionals in their field, while I was dressed professionally for a high school student. That put us all in just about the same outfit: dress shirt, no tie or jacket, and nice pants.

I shook hands with Kyle, then with Martin. He gave me an appraising look, which turned into a smile after a few seconds.

“Hello!” he said. “I spoke with Anderson about you. He highly recommended you, and also pointed me to some newspaper articles.”

I chuckled. “My reputation precedes me, clearly!”

“Fortunately,” Kyle said, “it’s a good one. Best to keep it that way! It’s much easier to keep a good reputation than to mend a poor one.”

“Sounds like Anderson,” Martin said. “Something I completely agree with.”

“Let’s head back into the office,” Kyle said.

We did, getting seated. Kyle took over the meeting for the first fifteen minutes or so, as he pretty much had to. I wasn’t hiring Martin, Kyle was. Doing it that way made the relationship one of Martin providing his services to Kyle, then Kyle providing both of their services to me. With that arrangement, any communication between Kyle and Martin that pertained to my affairs fell under attorney/client privilege.

Martin seemed slightly amused by the whole thing. I recognized it well, of course. We could hardly tell Martin why confidentiality mattered before we had the arrangement in place, after all.