Being the typical Harvard Student, I was studying during most of the Red Sox game though we were keeping up with the score. Up until the 5th inning, that is, at which point, I could resist temptation no longer. I walked across the hall and watched with some avid Sox fans.
As the game was ending and we needed one more out to win. The first time since 1918 to make it to the World Series, it suddenly hit me.!!! I was experiencing history. This was a once in a lifetime event. Something you remember forever. In case you haven’t noticed, I am a sox fan, there is no other way.
When the game was over, the crowd I was with was eerily quiet. We were all Sox fans but it was a very shocking moment. It was like we hoped for it so long that when it happened, it was surreal. We muted the sound on the TV to hear what we expected to be massive hysteria from the streets. There were, however, no unusual, out of the ordinary noises. It was almost as if everyone was sitting there, staring at their television, in awe of the event that had just unfolded before our very eyes.
My roommate and I decided to go see if maybe we could find some wild entirely over ecstatic fans. We walked out of our dorm and looked right and left and all we could see were dark, deserted streets. There was no one there. No one. We started walking towards our house, thinking maybe we could find some real commotion there. On the way over we kept searching for a bit of that action we hungered to see. But it was all silent. There were of course those rare elated fans running past us. But overall nothing. As we got closer to the house there was still nothing. We were beginning to think that Boston, well that it was confused. It was such a new concept that maybe they didn’t know how to react to it.
We turned away from the house and decided to walk to Harvard Square. If there was anything going on, it would be there. As we got closer we heard more and more and more shrieks, shouts, screams, and hollers. We started believing that maybe we had just been looking in the “wrong place and the wrong time”.
We got to the square and there were about 100 people and a lot of police. It seemed like people were celebrating. But there were no riotous signs and no hysteria. Just very happy people. We stood there and took a few pictures, we couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed that people were not very excited. We started to walk away when out of nowhere appears a band. They seemed to be running to something but as they got closer they jumped on top of the Subway station and started playing their horns. And suddenly we started to see throngs, no floods of people running toward the square. In a matter of seconds we were packed between hundreds and hundreds of hysterical Red Sox fans. The streets were blocked by mobs of people jumping and dancing to the tunes of the band and the police were blocking of the streets. Not stopping the disorder but encouraging it. It became so overwhelming that we couldn’t move, or hear, or talk, or think. It was just “WOW!”.
As we walked back home 5 minutes later we couldn’t shake a feeling of general well being. It was as if there were suddenly a moment when nothing in the world could be better.
And as I’m sitting here now, I can hear fireworks, and honkings, and hollering fans. And it’s soothing. I love IT!!!!!!
