Austin Wingerson

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In Texas I went to a game where the entire student side of the stadium did not sit down for four hours. I assumed the seats were broken. I checked the one next to me. It worked. I asked a student named Tyler why nobody was sitting. He said, "In case they need us." That was the whole answer. In my land we have a saying, always on the battlefield. A samurai does not lounge in the presence of a lord who may call him. He stands, so that when the call comes there is no distance between the call and the man. Here were thirty thousand of them. Standing. In case. I asked Tyler how often they are needed. He thought about it. "Once." Once. In 1922. The team was running out of healthy men, and a student named Gill was called down out of the stands. He put on an injured player's uniform and stood on the sideline, ready, for the rest of the game. He never went in. They won without him. That is the whole origin. A man who did not play. A hundred years of standing for a man who did not play. So I stood. I am not a student. I was not going to be called under any reading of the rules. My knees began filing complaints in the third quarter and I ignored them, because Tyler was nineteen and had stood through every home game for three years and had never once been called, and was not bitter about it, and was in fact eating nachos. Nobody was called. Nobody has been called since 1922. The knees of Texas do not care. In my land we say be ready at every moment. Texas built thirty thousand seats and refuses to use them.