Buckeyes Be Loved
by MAUREEN JOHANSSON
Consider this a desperate plea for help. Please will someone explain to me how Jeff can possibly be my boyfriend and not support the Ohio State Buckeyes? These are simply two ideas that cannot exist in the same universe. Believe it or not, it actually gets a lot worse than that. Imagine the following in the faintest of whispers, ��Jeff supports Michigan State.�� I know, impossible to fathom.
For those of you who��ve been living under a rock, some quick background courtesy of Wikipedia. The OSU-Michigan football game is the final game of the regular season and is played in November each year, alternating between Columbus and Ann Arbor, Michigan. ESPN has recognized the OSU-Michigan rivalry as the greatest rivalry in all of sports. Moreover, "Buckeye fever" permeates Columbus culture year-round and forms a major part of the city��s cultural identity.
Yes, you guessed it, Ohio State is my Alma Mater, and Michigan is Jeff��s blah blah blah, who cares?! Needless to say, when I suggested breaking from our relatively peaceful existence in Cleveland for a little November visit to the great city of Columbus, Jeff puffed out his chest and descended into the kind of primitive posturing that gives the Midwest a bad name. The bet was a simple one �C old fashioned bragging rights to the winner, serf-like behavior for the rest of the weekend for the loser.
It was a little bit of hot and cold when Jeff and I piled into my Chevrolet Aveo 5 door on that fateful November morn, and headed south on the interstate towards Central Michigan. We were well aware that we would be spending the day together exploring Columbus, so we kept the insults to a minimum and even managed the occasional ��Hun pass the chips,�� without allowing the flare up of full-blown hostilities.
After settling into our hotel, we climbed back in the Aveo and drove around Columbus. Jeff is an architect, so mustering up a brand of benevolence born of my experience as a teacher in the Cleveland public school system, I suggested we visit the celebrated Ohio Statehouse. The structure took 21 years to complete, and was built on foundations 18 feet deep, laid by prison labor gangs rumored to have been comprised largely of masons jailed for minor infractions.
After this thoughtful little visit, Jeff was putty in my hands, and he agreed to a walk through the botanical garden in Franklin Park Conservatory. We were both pleasantly surprised to find a large collection of glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly, an incredible artist whose mind-blowing work we had seen on the ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Next stop, the world-renowned Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. I seriously considered checking Jeff into the primate enclosure after witnessing his extraordinarily accurate imitation of a gorilla. Somehow, the lout found it necessary to display this exceptional skill upon encountering a group of school kids sporting Ohio State t-shirts.
The next day, will live forever in my memory as one of the finest ever as my Buckeye heroes, silenced Jeff into a state of pathetic submission with a 42-39 victory. Oh the sweet, sweet power of those three glorious points. As lady of the manor I was a cruel mistress. My inferior was subjected to a host of humiliations, including driving the Chevy Aveo 5 door with me stretched out in the back seat doing my best Miss Daisy impersonation.
The trip from Central Ohio back to Cleveland was relatively uneventful, aside from my having to occasionally reprimand Jeff for referring to me as ��you bloody Buckeye.�� By the end of the drive, I was back in control cooing happily as Jeff dutifully listed the superior attributes of my beloved boys in red and white. I do think however that I might have heard him muttering under his breath, ��Next year �C Ann Arbor.��
Author Bio: Maureen Johansson is a part-time writer and football enthusiast whose good natured observations can be found on various travel and sport sites on the World Wide Web. Maureen��s boyfriend Jeff is working on convincing her to attend an advanced anger management class. For more information on the Chevrolet Aveo visit chevyvalues.com.
