This actually comes from absolutely true, swear-on-my-Joss-Whedon-collection stories. The first was actually a Use for a Dead Father.
As I said in my first blog on this site, my dad died in 1992, but this did not stop my family members from taking him on "field trips." One such field trip was to Father/Son night at the local minor league hockey game in Nashville.
My Dead Brother (who wasn't quite dead yet) went to my mother's house, got the Dead Father from the closet and took him to the game.
"Is this the night that, if you bring your dad, you get in for half price?" my DB asks. The sixteen year old girl working the box office replied in the affirmative.
THUD. He dropped the box unceremoniously on the counter. "That's my dad."
According to the DB, the poor girl looked stricken, confused, and utterly stammered out, "I'm gonna have to ask the manager."
As it turned out, the manager *loved* the idea. The DF got his own chair, the beer guy kept wanting to serve him because he looked "thirsty," and they even announced over the PA that it was "Bob's first hockey game." They neglected to mention the DF had been dead about 6 years at this point.
The other story was when my undergrad alma mater, Southern Illinois University, was in the NCAA championships in 2002. I live in Atlanta and had already taken great delight in emailing my entire office with a picture of a Saluki, so that they could all know what animal had beat their beloved UGA Bulldogs. SIU played UConn next in the Sweet 16.
The DB was also an SIU alum, and *loved* SIU basketball. So naturally, I had to take the DB (who was stone dead by now) to watch the game with me at a local watering hole. I had him sitting on the table with an SIU shaker. He was unexpressive when SIU lost, but I know deep down inside, he was hurting.
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