Duke, Horizontal

Someday, a few generations from now, long after I’m gone, my great-grandchildren will unearth the albums of Tailgate photos I’ve left behind. At this point, football will probably be played with lightsabers, beer will taste like cotton candy and pictures will talk and move and have scratch-and-sniff technology. Still, these future offspring will get the general gist of the Duke millennial Tailgate experience as they pour over the highlight reel of the glory days of their dearly departed Granny.

They’ll find the photos of me in my pink Nike tennis dress that turned into a kind of makeshift tutu when I outgrew both its length and my racquet-sports career. Perhaps they’ll uncover a group effort to channel the spirit of a Good Charlotte concert, complete with emo eyeliner and skull t-shirts. I hope they don’t find the pictures documenting the senior tank top’s double entendre, but maybe the joke will be rendered obsolete by the time the future rolls around. Everybody will appear soaking wet, but my descendents won’t be able to locate a pool or shower. Sometimes it will appear as if it is raining beer. Undoubtedly, they’ll notice the permanence of neon tights, plastic sunglasses with Greek letters, lax pinnies, tiaras, koozies, beer helmets and galoshes. If this is the legacy I leave to the generations that follow in my footsteps, so be it. Better they uncover it than aliens.

That being said, the pictures offer an incomplete story, particularly obscuring the important preceding and concluding rituals of Tailgate. The mornings must begin with Egg McMuffins with a side of hamburgers (hybrid menu for the win). Your drinks are procured from whatever ingredients remain from Friday night activities. En route to Tailgate, you must find out the On Time Taxi driver’s entire life story, hoping to draw notice away from the cops preventing his convenient access to the Blue Zone. Skip as you enter the parking lot. The sounds of “Shout” and “Teenage Dream” waft over the makeshift fences, mingling with the smell of cheap, lukewarm beer. Oh, what a beautiful morning. Tailgate is not a verb—it’s a proper noun.

Following the conclusion of the festivities, one dear friend outlined the rules:

1. Make acquaintances with someone who lives on West Campus.

2. Sneak into section past the morning’s sleeping casualties.

3. Remove soaked clothing. Ideally leave your beer-filled rain boots in the hall.

4. Shower. Probably not alone.

9. You still can’t drive home.

10. Better order a pizza.

11. May as well drink a beer with that pizza.

12. Time to go to Shooters.

Tailgate was one of the best and worst parts of institutionalized Duke culture. Like most inherently fun things, the event was crude, dangerous, illegal and necessary to prohibit. It was a disaster in pink tights. And yet, as my smiling face will reveal to whatever my progeny may wonder about their ancestor’s distant youth, it was clearly a hell of a time.

Brooke Hartley is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Thursday.