The Unconquered

In Doak Campbell Stadium, watching the Florida State football game from the student section, I remembered.

It was parents' weekend. The unlucky N.C. State team looked like a group that the Globetrotters would have paid to be their foil.

It was an afternoon of life in the moment. In a place overflowing with karmic celebration - youth and innocence, pride and passion, hope and excitement. In their college faces, a prescience of possibilities; of dreams yet fulfilled but confidently expected.

I imagined their futures as I looked around.

It was impossibly larger than real life; like it could only have been created by a gigantic glitter-boy generator. There were sequined drum majorettes, spinning their batons high into the blue fall sky, conducting uncontrollable expressions of joy. The sun sparkled off of the band in strobing flashes of light.

Among hats and helmets, pom poms and round-off flips, a Seminole warrior atop an appaloosa charged onto the field and plunged a flaming spear of defiance into the turf.

I looked across the waves of garnet and I could see their goodness. They stood in their tee shirts and jeans, tomahawk-chopping and chanting for the entire game.  In rows and aisles, they were absorbed in every play, every song, every hand gesture.  They laughed and high-fived. They took turns starting the noisy crescendos that began every kick-off or punt.

These are the same strangers that are frustratingly glued to their smart phones and laptops and who spend too many hours on Facebook. They stay up too late and are sloppy. They cook on their George Foreman grills at 3am in their tiny dorm rooms and apartments. They sleep until noon. They text too much.

But God, they are wonderful.

They hunch over their white Apple laptops in libraries, smiling at each other and posting on Facebook. Drinking Starbucks. Thinking about going to Ken's Bar at midnight.

They're a new species - and they make me believe in the future.

As technical geeks and academic magicians, they've been able to overcome challenges never imposed upon (or imagined by) previous generations. They're expected to embrace change and learn it overnight. And deal with economic pain in our society unseen since the great depression.    

They're not timid - not frightened by people telling them that they can't do something. They've been empowered by instant communication and distant connections. They've seen more in their 20-odd years than most of us saw by our 50's. They have hundreds of close friends they network with every day and  new attitudes about marriages and mortgages and expectations.

As I think back on that afternoon in the student section, I get goosebumps.  I remember. It's that same feeling I had, long ago. Before minivans and mortgages.

And I know who the Seminoles really are now.

They are the unconquered.  And they are just in time.