LEE: A world-scale challenge for you, for when you come to Jordan-Hare this fall
If Auburn fans have learned anything from this summer, it ought to be this.
Her eyes pour over the ballet of noodles, sauce and seasoned slices of meat dancing across her plate.
It’s chicken alfredo — or “alfredo chicken,” where she’s from — and she’s traveled so far. She’s traveled so often, as well. Back home, she can take a train to another country for a day trip. Her money works wherever she goes, exchanges easy — different cultures, different languages, different people, all at her fingertips.
But she’s never seen anything like this.
Her friend records her staggered reaction. The size of this plate — the scale. The smells and the sounds. She grabs her fork and takes her bite.
Shock. Awe. Bliss. It’s incredible, she says.
Her life is changed, she says.
Then she got a free refill. Then the staff sang happy birthday to someone.
Then she walked out of the Olive Garden.
All the viral videos of foreigners in the U.S. for the World Cup play out a bit like that. It’s my mom’s genre of internet video right now: The tourists posts about how they’re blown away by places and things that we take for granted, amazed by a Chili’s or wherever. They can’t believe the size of Bass Pro Shops, the scope of Walmart, the sheer audacity of Buc-ees.
Auburn experienced a bit of that firsthand, in its own backyard a couple weeks ago — that “the European mind cannot comprehend this” stuff — when Argentina played in Jordan-Hare.
It was in Auburn that the Twitter sensation Freddy picked up viral steam, on his way to meeting Ella Langley and, even better, the Hardy Boyz. (This woman in Auburn/Opelika still deserves a TODAY show interview more than anyone.)
Considering all that, here’s a challenge:
This fall, when you come back to Auburn, act like you’re a tourist.