Under the early morning glow of the stadium lights, the only ghostly reminders of the game the night before were the abandoned pom-poms, half-eaten hot dogs, and leftover boxes of popcorn.
Pulling on two pairs of gloves, I climbed the stairs into Section 2 and started methodically cleaning each row.
Peanut shells clung to my gloves as I pushed them into piles. I picked two pieces of chewed blue gum off stadium seats.
I opened drink lids and poured the soft drinks from yesterday’s game down the steps before tossing them into the trash bag. What I thought was a Coke turned out to be a dip cup, so the spit and chew joined the stream of soda on the stairs.
This was my fourth time picking up the stadium and tailgating fields. My honorary band fraternity, Kappa Kappa Psi, traditionally cleans up following the first football game of the season. Like all of the groups that volunteer, we’re paid a small sum for our service.
In my experiences cleaning the stadium and tailgating field, I’ve picked up what Hoosier fans leave behind. Boxers hanging from trees. Used condoms left on the ground. Baby diapers left next to an abandoned cooler.
That Sunday was no different.
The day before, thousands of students, parents, and alumni had pulled into the tailgating fields, unloaded their coolers, and lit their grills. Bodies grinded to music, clothes came off. Alcohol coated throats and clouded minds.
The next morning, the humanity and insanity was gone. The only cars left in the field slowly got towed. The trash awaited us.
The tailgating fields after an IU home game looked like a bomb went off in a liquor store. Crushed Solo cups, empty alcohol containers, and beer cases lay abandoned.
Standing in one place, I picked up five handles of vodka. Another step, and I reached two more.
As
the volunteers walked through the tailgating field, we slowly filled the trash
bags with humanity’s leftovers. Broken sunglasses. Pizza boxes. Hot dogs and
hamburgers.
I combed through the fields, looking for clues about the student species. As the trash continued to grow, so did the stories we dreamed up of how it got there.
Someone found an empty sodium chloride syringe with no needle. We began a guessing game on why someone would have a syringe on them in the tailgating fields. Were they diabetic? Allergic to something?
And then we realized it was for Jell-O shots.
I circled a tree and found a lone men’s leather flip flop propped up against the back. Did the owner walk away with one bare foot?
Under a pile of beer cases and Solo cups, I unearthed a small women’s white top, covered in pizza and mud stains. It was so tiny it looked like it could fit a child. How did it end up in a pile of trash? What did she wear instead?
The sight of something dark brown intertwined in the green blades of grass stopped my guessing game. As I picked up the many dark brown clumps, strands of hair stuck to my gloves. Somebody had walked away from the tailgate bald.
Two hours later, the stadium rows and tailgating fields were clean. My left glove was ripped open in the back, the khaki color now stained brown with some yellow mustard highlights from an abandoned cook-out.
I placed my last trash bag in the overflowing pile at one of the dumpsters. Another volunteer had found a handwritten note in a pile of trash and decided to keep it until the end, so I joined the group that had gathered around to listen to what was being read from a damp piece of paper.
It was a post-break-up note, an ex-girlfriend’s parting words. The blue ink covering the front and back was still legible with only a corner ripped.
The girl said she wanted her ex to be happy. She had always loved him, more than he loved her, she believed.
Hearing the note being read out loud felt like high school all over again. I’d scribbled love notes and break-up notes and the “Do you like me? Check yes or no” notes. She put her heart onto that wet piece of notebook paper, whoever she was. It ended up in a pile of trash among the alcohol bottles and crushed Solo cups.
But she wasn’t the only one to lose a part of herself at the tailgate. Whether it was a dirty shirt, an empty syringe, or a head full of hair, everyone’s stories ended up sealed in those black bags that overflowed from the dumpsters. They waited to be carted out of Bloomington and to their final resting place in a landfill somewhere in southern Indiana.
And I went home to wash the mud, the stench of alcohol, and the heartbreak off of me.
