The return of 'oop time

The temperature found its way to the 30s last night and will again tonight. It's time to bring the wood hoop up from the cellar, place it in the family room, and fill it with firewood. Done, done, and done. Some parts of the state had a stab of frost, but we're not there yet.

So, it's 'oop time, as in wood hoop, not basketball. We're only in the second week of football season. Last night, we went to grandson Mike's football game. Because his high school's new athletic field is not yet finished, the team had to play a home game in Gardner. They won. Mike scored a touchdown, although the newspaper credited the score to his brother, Matt. (They spelled our last name correctly. Go figure.)

We sat in the stands and alternately watched the game and the other show around us. We'd forgotten that, for high school kids, going to a high school football game is so much less about the game and more about all the other kids. See and be seen. Parading to and from the snack bar. The girls were wearing sleek, tight, colorful jeans and jackets, looking stylish beyond their years. The boys bounced around in over-sized sweats, alabaster gangstas from the exoburbs.

Researchers are reporting that married couples who don't have children at home are less likely to be involved with family, friends, and community than their single counterparts. (The Roman church has been using this point for centuries in their justification for clerical celibacy.) We've lived in this neighborhood for more than 25 years. There are just a handful of neighbors, fewer than 10, who would recognize us or we them if we met some place away from our homes. It's not that we're not nice people. Rather, we keep to ourselves because we like each other's company.

To have us, then, out past 10 o'clock on a chilled, blustery Saturday night is remarkable indeed, a change as noteworthy as the change of season itself.