It’s Tailgating Time!

This weekend I bought a little grill that connects to the receiver hitch on my pickup.

It can handle both gas or charcoal, and even has little legs that I can put on it if I want to use it at home or lounge around it at the greatest NFL stadium in the world.

Which I will.

A lot.

Like every game this year.

I’m a dreamer, as most of you know, so the first thing I did when I got it home was sit the box down under a nice shady spot at home, cranked out my Kansas City Chiefs chair,  sipped an ice cold Jack Daniels Punch, gazed at the box my new grill came in, and did just that.

Dream.

I dreamed about what my grill and I will do and see in 2013.

One fine fall Sunday, when the wind is just a little brisk with crisp cool fall air, I’ll peel away the wrapper on some fresh, fat, beer soaked bratwurst and one by one listen to them sizzle as I flip them on my special new grill.

The smell will be a smell that you all are familiar with.

A smell that’s nice in your backyard, but indescribably wonderful at Arrowhead.

One game day I’ll peel back the lid on some juicy blood red steaks I have been soaking in vodka so that the little smokey pieces I pop in my mouth will just kind of melt away so I won’t even have to swallow.

And just like the two feet of smokey, juicy, ribs I’ll warm up that I got from Arthur Bryant’s, I’ll forget to put the sauce on them because they are so delicious they won’t need sauce to be wonderful.

I’ll smile at the little girl who giggles while her daddy swings her around, just like my father used to swing me.

And I’ll smile at the college kids playing catch and cooking whatever their college kid wallets could afford and whatever their college kid mini fridges could contribute and drinking whatever the Arrowhead tailgaters around them offered them when they sensed a college kid thirst, or what those Arrowhead tailgaters lost from the open cooler when they turned their heads for just a bit to smile at something just like me.

And I’ll smile at my soul mate as she drinks her beer and smiles back, and knows how happy I am at that very moment and how happy I’ll always be with her at Arrowhead for the rest of our lives.

I’ll offer the older couple who didn’t bring some things they should have brought but didn’t a hand and a loan here and there. Things they would have remembered when they were younger but missed in their retirement years.

For you see all these people I’ll smile at were either once me or will be me one day.

Because that’s Arrowhead for you.

Your never too young to be a Chiefs fan. Or too old.

Even if  you’re just a little baby.

Or a little girl who’s daddy swings her around like mine used to.

Or a college kid who doesn’t have a dime to spare and doesn’t give a damn, because he has his youth and his future and his carefree now.

Or a middle aged couple who can finally afford to get the brand name grub from Hyvee instead of Aldi, and who can finally see retirement on the horizon, a retirement that will include plenty of Arrowhead Stadium and maybe a customized Kansas City Chiefs RV and the best tailgating on earth and the moons of Jupiter.

Or that retired couple who are too old to do the things they did when they wore younger clothes and peered through younger eyes and remembered everything without a list.

And that is Arrowhead for me, you see, because I have been each of those people, or will be.

Thirty years ago, or thirty years from now.

From the day I peered at the world as an infant to the day I’ll peer at it for the last time.

At the greatest NFL stadium in the world.