Greetings again, Bronco Nation, from the Office of Orange Jacket Guy; it is a distinct honor and cherished privilege to write to you. I have survived The Blue & Orange Store’s signing event for Kellen Moore. It was one of the best times of my life.
The story begins at about midday Friday I got notification from my client, Bronco Fett, of some unsettling details about the pending signing event: that there was going to be a very limited number of fans in the line and people were already at that time lining up. Due to this, time was short and we had to accelerate our plans, so I did not have enough time to properly suit up and reach the mall in an effective state. Consequently, I was forced to leave not as Orange Jacket Guy, but instead as his alter-ego, Matthew Jensen.
I arrived somewhere around 1pm Friday both shocked and relieved. At first I was shocked that some Vandal vehicle was brazen enough to harass the faithful Broncos already in line. My “BOISE!” chant from the parking lot was received well enough to keep the chant going to repel the Vandal assault. I was relived at that point to find out I was somewhere around #40 in line. Others in my party were en route so everything was OK.
I settled down for the long wait and chilled those many hours with the others in line. Many of the regulars were there. They know who they are so I’m going to avoid the risk of leaving someone’s name out by simply not naming names. My sister, Katy Metzger, was instrumental in the undertaking. She got me there and was responsible for the awesome chicken and potatoes dinner that was left for me while in the line. Her little son came along for the drop off and was appropriately dressed for the occasion in blue and orange.
For the next several hours the line didn’t grow much but a nice lady who turned out to be an educator was a few people behind me in line. Some of us watched her stuff as she tended to other important matters in exchange for candy later. Somewhere around there in the timeline local news outlets were in the mix.
Night fell. The line barely made it to the Kohl’s entrance. Some guy put up a tent right about there but I came back around to ask him a few questions but the tent was gone. Sad.
The line finally made it to the bushes on the hill and that’s when I noticed a rather enterprising fan had brought a generator and had two kids play each other on NCAA football. I kept tabs on the first couple of games like I would normal games just to make it fun. The first game was BSU v TCU. It didn’t go well and I think they cut the game off early for the second game BSU v Bama. The game was tied at 14 at halftime and it got worse from there to the point that I joked that they let Coach Hawk back in. I don’t remember the final score but BSU was down 14…
The hours passed as the line slowly curved down the hill and back towards Kohl’s on the lower level. It was at about that point where I stopped paying attention to the length of the line (it was somewhere around 200/250 people at that point). We did, however, continue to walk back and forth and stopped for pictures and stuff (ok, mainly just Bronco Fett, I was unable to get into full costume).
Somewhere in the unwinding hours there were repeated skirmishes between people in the line and the mall’s sprinklers. My own phone is still recovering from that. ATTENTION BOISE TOWNE SQUARE STAFF: It was an extremely boneheaded and careless move to have those sprinklers on at that time. You managed to make a lot of us angry by damaging our stuff. NOT COOL.
4am came more quickly than I expected. My party of 4 made it in with relative ease (we didn’t exactly pick up and move in an efficient manner but it all worked out in the end). It was at this point they handed out the tickets and allowed people at a really slow pace to enter the mall and wait in the line inside. It was there in our place in line that we settled for most of the remaining time.
The mall isn’t a very engaging place during those hours of the morning. Somewhere in the mix I got 20 minutes of sleep. Somehow I got another 5 where Bronco Fett got a picture of me collapsed on a table. Walking around helped with being tired. It was around this time that we got most of our pictures.
Store management was having a raffle with our ticket numbers for BSU hats. I was lucky enough to get one of them. The bullhorn used to carry this out, however, sounded like it was screwing up my order of large fries again. Also the siren function on it was used way too liberally, especially in the presence of people running on little-to-no sleep.
The time came to pick up again and move the line along. That is when the moment came. Kellen Moore, the man who gave our fair city many cherished memories, arrived and we gave him a warm welcome. The line moved along and Kellen, in his typical humble fashion, just smiled and laughed and occasionally made short comments with fans.
Oddly enough, he said NOTHING about Bronco Fett’s unusual costume but did laugh at a groaner joke about being left-handed like myself. Kellen signed the hat I won earlier along with his Senior Bowl card, and just like that, the whole thing was over.
I had fun with a few hundred of my closest friends. We made our ways home. It was then that I discovered that the odd bruise on my left foot that was bothering me the entire time was not a bruise but a really odd compound blister. I found something equally disgusting when I got home. There was a lot of sour grapes on Facebook claiming there was a lot of cutting and a lot of disparaging those of us who were a lot more ahead in line.
I will not report exactly on what was said but I will cut it all down authoritatively by stating a few things. Sometimes crowds are unpredictable so The Blue and Orange Store had to make rules. Cutting off the line was justifiable because Kellen only had three hours there and true fans would not rudely force him to alter his plans by dragging the line longer. You can’t be justified in claiming there were people ahead of you who were less deserving if less than half of the line’s capacity had made it to the line by 10:30pm. Didn’t make it in time? Too bad, and there’s no reason why you should make that anyone else’s problem either. There was little-to-no cutting in line as people were taking shifts between the line and their vehicles (yes, some people, myself not included, had this luxury). Being angry and frustrated about not getting to the line in time doesn’t entitle you to anything but shame. Those of you haters bring shame and dishonor to all of Bronco Nation when you act like that.
As for the rest of us, we had a good time. We had fun with each other, and I was glad to be in such good company. One always leaves this kind of thing thinking, “man, we need to do this again, real soon.”
Until next time, Bronco Nation: In Pete We Trust
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