Lasting love that doesn’t Bruin my life
WE’RE FROM RIVAL SCHOOLS BUT BONDED DURING A KEYBOARD COURTSHIP. EVERY FALL, I FIGHT ON.
MY MOTHER, a UCLA graduate, switched her allegiance on a dime the day I enrolled at USC. She and my father attended every Trojans home game from that day forward. Familial blood may be thicker than alumni water, but not so, it seems, when it comes to spousal relations.
And I know about it all too well.
My husband, Brad, and I, both divorced and not in the market for anyone who didn’t ooze quality, had engaged in a keyboard courtship. He was avid, while I was reluctant, at best. I refused to meet him for months, having been single for six years and not the least bit interested in sharing anything with anyone ever again. But he said he was willing to wait however long it took for me to muster up the courage and he would even manage to overlook the fact that my diploma was from USC because he (unfortunately) was a devoted Bruin.
Letters soared back and forth between us, and because we were both 50 and counting, once I caved and we came face to face, we wasted no time before announcing the nuptials, although we knew football season could be an impediment to forever after.
We shopped for rings before our first crosstown rivalry contest, the battle that former UCLA football coach Red Sanders once stated is not a matter of life and death: “It’s more important than that!”
We set our wedding date for April, long before we realized what would happen in the fall at kickoff. Whereas I pictured us curled up on the sofa, popcorn at the ready — maybe even buying tickets to the big game someday — I was soon to learn that the Los Angeles gridiron civil war would permeate the walls of our love nest.
Brad started it. The first year, I scurried to Trader Joe’s like a nurturing newlywed wife to gather fun football food for what promised to be the fulfillment of my dream: our enjoying the light banter of frivolous competition in front of the television on a sunny Southern California Saturday afternoon.
When I emerged from the market, shopping bags in hand, I realized the man I’d promised to honor (Had I remembered to tell the priest to omit the word “obey”?) had switched my USC license plate frames to the ones decorated in the baby blue of his alma mater — ugh, UCLA Bruins!
Two could play at this game. I plopped the bags on the back seat, hopped on the 405 Freeway and beelined to SC Trojan Town at South Coast Plaza — yes, Virginia, there really is a retail Santa Claus for the University of Spoiled Children.
I whipped out my husband’s Visa card and promptly placed every fanatical fan item I could carry on it. I had napkins, plates, cups, a king-size blanket, T-shirts, sweatpants, pajamas, signs, streamers, pennants, socks, hats, jerseys and my personal favorite, because he pretends to have symptoms of a stroke every time he hears it, a refrigerator magnet that plays the Trojan fight song.
Fight on! In no time, I had racked up an unconscionable dollar amount of paraphernalia that was sure to bring the house down.
Then there was the year when USC was favored by a margin wider than the Pacific Ocean, the year the man I thought I’d be sharing my life with chose to clean out the garage and not even watch one quarterback toss. That was the year I ate all the cardinal and gold M&Ms myself.
And to this day, whenever the calendar rolls around to the football game more important than the Super Bowl, I can find myself in company that includes Brad’s fraternity bro and his wife, a former UCLA song girl.
Although outnumbered and having to sit next to a song girl, I handle it gracefully despite some tiresome enemy tirades on the topic of campus controversy: á la parents paying to get their progeny into USC.
I point out that it’s that important to be able to graduate from a prestigious university, while Brad’s Bruin guests argue that those parents threw away their money.
Shortly after standing at the altar before family and friends, when we attended a UCLA/USC basketball game outfitted in our respective school sweatshirts, we were observed by a group of boorish Bruins.
“Aw, man,” one of them said to my husband. “Couldn’t you have done better?”
Clearly, you can’t major in manners on the west side of town.
Twenty years into sacramental union, we’d like to think we have for the most part let it go, especially since neither team provides the stellar spectacle that they did in their glory days from 1969-1973.
But every time November rolls around, unfurled is the flag flying our schools’ colors: half cardinal and gold, half blue and yellow. “A House Divided,” it proclaims for all the neighbors to see.
So perhaps to gain the proper perspective, it’s time for us to arrange a ceremony during which we renew our sacred vows adding just one more: For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer … and no matter who wins the game.
> The author is a second-generation Los Angeles native who lives in Fallbrook, Calif. A graduate of USC, she is the author of essays and stories that have appeared in newspapers and magazines for over two decades, including the Los Angeles Times, Orange Coast Magazine and Newsweek.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find past columns at latimes.com/laaffairs.