So, it's a Friday night and I'm sitting, alone, in my parked car outside Killeen High School, surrounded by oversized pick-up trucks. the one to my front left has a matching, oversized "Redneck" sticker slapped across the rear cab window and a pair of equally oversized truck-balls dangling from the bumper.
Why am I here? It's Homecoming, of course! My kid doesn't even attend Killen High School, but Harker Heights High is lucky enough to be playing them tonight, and my daughter made Master singers this year. What the Hell does Master Singers have to do with High School Football? Yeah! That's what I said. But I'm a newbie to all this southern stuff. The same kids who sing Russian lyrical compositions at regional tryouts get to belt out the National Anthem at Friday night games with the rest of the school tossing half eaten hot dogs and verbal abuse onto the field.
All this, and I get to wait in my car, in the parking lot, in 90 degree Texas weather because no sane Choir member would want to stay beyond the Alma Mater. (got to get home and wash the ketchup stains off the choir shirt, inside out, and iron it for next weeks abuse.)
I'm really making an effort to get into this murder mystery while I'm waiting, but I can't even remember the name of the guy that died two pages ago. (or was it the elderly female neighbor?) Kids are walking by with Mums bigger than their own heads. I am hit with another southern question. Are the Mums for the game or the dance. The dance is tomorrow. My daughter is going to the dance and she doesn't have a Mum. Especially not one bigger than her head. Even though my child has expressed absolutely no interest in the Texas Mum, I feel my own investigative juices flowing.....stay tuned if you feel the same bewilderment about gigantic, bejeweled, multi-ribboned, and garishly colored floral arrangements, with the odd sacrificial teddy bear terrifyingly hot glue gunned to the center, that I do.
My time in the car has made me eager to develop this story.
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