Life with the Tennessee Volunteers: Resistance Is Futile

Eleven or twelve years ago, I knew what the hell I was doing.

I lived in the same town I grew up in, rooting for the same college and pro teams.  I had the clothes, knew which radio stations carried which games, and even while traveling around didn't have to miss a game except by choice.

It wasn't a bad life, but of course it changed.  My new bride didn't like my town, or my suggestions of much larger, NFL and MLB-equipped, cities.  We wound up in a nice place—I like the weather and the scenery, but these people, and their colors, are different.

My wardrobe was, and for a large part remains, primarily the colors of my alma mater and the pro teams I grew up with: Colors that do not fit here.  Colors that do not match here.  Colors that, quite frankly, are harder to find here.  Colors that are not orange.

I am now a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee.  The people are nice, the weather is fine—there are so many worse places to be.

But, so help me, these people are orange.  Also, their buildings are orange.  They drive orange cars.  The playgrounds are overrun with children that, from a distance, resemble oompa-loompas.

Orange, for me, was your breakfast drink, the color of plastic barrels and warning signs on an interstate under construction, prison inmates on TV, the long extension cord that went to the weed whacker.  Orange only really got out of hand on Halloween.

After living here for a dozen years, the orange just becomes part of the background, like the grass or the sky or the potholes anywhere else.  Yet, when you look with a will, it can be overwhelming.

Businesses, at least the successful ones, are drenched in orange paint.  TV ads, the newspaper, orange frosting on cakes at the grocery store—it's just everywhere.  Even the sign in the men's room admonishing cleanliness has an orange background hue.

Prison escapees from other states wouldn't need to change clothes before walking the streets here.  To non-residents, the entire city is the big house.  The all-over-orange jumpsuit-wearing escapee here is just another Vol going about his business, just like everyone else.

I am the one who is different.  I am the one who is not fitting in, with white cars and blue shirts and red hats. 

Why do I still resist?  After all, this football team, the colors of which I find so different, is better by far than my alma mater and its in-state rivals.  The combined win totals of all of the teams of my native state wouldn't add up to a subpar season for this bunch.  They're winners.  They get it done.

I grew up to the alcoholic solace of hard losses dealt out by the much stronger teams like Tennessee.  I can drink like these people can win, but which is the better skill?

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