Hey, can you keep a secret?
If you were like a close friend of mine, you’d respond with:
“Sure I can keep a secret.”
“You want to hear one?”
We’ve done that Laurel and Hardy thing 50 or 60 times.
And every time I laugh.
Out loud.
But this time I’ve got a secret that I really don’t want to get out.
So what better way to make sure that doesn’t happen than to post it on the internet.
Thankfully my 12-year-old son doesn’t read my blog.
Or at least he won’t admit it.
But in a few hours he and I are headed East.
Actually South.
As in South Bend.
Indiana.
The home of our beloved Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.
This Saturday the Irish are hosting USC.
The University of Spoiled Children.
It’s the 83rd meeting in this historic rivalry.
And a pretty meaningful game in my life.
As a diehard Notre Dame fan, I hate USC.
Growing up in LA, I really hate USC.
EVERYTHING about that school.
Except O.J. Simpson.
What a great guy.
I wonder where he is these days.
As for that SC-Notre Dame rivalry, I've been fortunate to see a bunch of those games in person.
Four or five in LA.
And two back in Indiana.
The last time was 2001.
That was the year my father and I decided to make his first trip back to South Bend.
I remember him telling me a few months earlier, “one of these years we should go.”
“One of these years?” I said.
“Let’s go this year.”
Good thing we did.
He died eight months later.
Like most Jewish kids from California, Notre Dame football is a ritual in my house.
Every Saturday in the fall my son and I sit in front of the TV.
For four plus hours.
We root for the Irish.
I teach him curse words.
Father/Son bonding at its best.
Up until a couple of days ago, we had plans of watching the SC game in our basement.
Where we watch every Notre Dame game.
But thanks to my twitter account getting hacked this week, that all changed.
As you may have read in my last blog, I spent most of my Tuesday unspamming myself from twitter-gate.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is I spent most of my Tuesday on twitter.
If not, I might have missed this tweet:
Now just because Notre Dame was releasing “limited” tickets for the game.
That didn’t mean I was going to get any.
But I still had to try.
Right?
So at 8:30am ET, exactly, I called the box office.
Within seconds the automated voice came on.
You have reached... blah blah blah.
Your call will be answered... blah blah blah.
... order that it was received.
Blah blah blah.
Then the computer lady told me I was 22nd in line.
22nd.
Is that good?
Is that bad?
Ok, let’s say all 21 before me buy two seats.
That’s like 53.
Is that above the limit of “limited”?
Oh well, I’ll just hang on.
You never know.
For the next 11 minutes, all I heard was the automated voice doing her thing.
Then it stopped.
Suddenly.
Along with my heart.
And for the next 92 seconds.
Give or take.
I heard nothing.
I kept waiting for the line to be disconnected.
But after a few minutes, a human came on.
A real human.
“Can I help you?”, I think she said.
YES YOU CAN HELP ME.
I WANT TICKETS.
TWO TICKETS.
FOR THE NOTRE DAME-USC FOOTBALL GAME.
TWO TICKETS.
ME AND MY SON.
MY SON AND I.
WHATEVER.
Hopefully I dropped a please or thank you in there somewhere.
But once I was done blabbering, she said “how about two in the Notre Dame Students Section?”
Most people would’ve said YES before she was done.
Not Larry David.
And not me.
Instead I said, “is that all that you have?”
Fortunately she didn’t hang up.
But she did say, “Yes, those are the only two tickets together I have left in the stadium.”
“The last two?”
“YES, THE LAST TWO!”
“Ok, I’ll take them.”
It turns out they sold all of those “limited” seats in just 27 minutes.
And I got two of them.
WE got two of them.
Except my son doesn’t know it.
He’s going to find out Friday afternoon.
When he sees the “Welcome to South Bend” sign.
For the first time.
Shhhhhhhhh.
