A Present from My Favorite Wildcat

Watching that rather ugly football game yesterday between KU and K-State reminded me of a happy memory of a year ago. You might recall that the outcome of the game last year was somewhat different, but that wasn’t why I was happy. The cause for a smile here is a happy Matty memory.

Picture my nice non-confrontational room at the end of a peaceful hallway (the photo above helps). Perhaps you can see the happy sign at the end which says “Jayhawk Blvd.” Last year at this time I was waking up from a peaceful night’s sleep in the gentle glow of a Jayhawk victory. As I got out of bed, I noticed that the message light on my phone was blinking. It was a message from Matty which said simply, “Sorry about the sign. I’ll get you a new one.” When I opened my door I found that my Jayhawk sign had been turned into a piece of purple propaganda with writing all over it.

Now, it turns out that this was probably the only time I can remember that Matty and I were actually a little mad at each other. You see, in all fairness, you might say that Matty had been somewhat…provoked, shall we say…by a certain…let’s say happy…Jayhawk fan the previous night. However, after Matty defaced my sign he felt bad and left me the phone message. When I talked to him in the morning, I had to tell him that I actually owned the sign for quite some time and it was a special sign. Of course that made him feel worse. I kind of regret making a big deal of the whole thing now, but I was actually a bit upset.

In order to make things right, Matty took the sign and spent a couple hours I think scrubbing the purple magic marker writing off using a toothbrush and losing much skin off his fingers too. He returned my sign to me almost as good as new (I’m actually kind of glad now that you can still see some of the writing; it’s a great memory). We both apologized and made up and things were back to the way they always were between the two of us…but the story doesn’t end here.

My birthday was about a week later. When I opened the door of my room early in the morning on my birthday, leaning up against the wall was a new metal “Jayhawk Fans Parking Only” sign (see below). I turned it over and found that it was from Matty with wonderful note (see below). He said that he couldn’t believe he ordered something “KU” on e-bay, and didn’t want to again, but he wanted to do something special for me on my birthday.

Every year now when the KU / K-State game and my birthday come around and I look at my sign from Matty, I will always think back to the October of 2004 and remember one of the greatest birthday presents I ever got and one of the best friends I ever had. Congratulations on the Wildcat victory, Matty.

My Birthday Present from Matty