The Darkest Day of My Life: #AuburnDad|AU Hot Topics|Team BattleGround|College BattleGround

Pride goeth before the fall, is the old saying.

For the last year as scholarship after scholarship came rolling in for my daughter, I could not have been any happier. After all, all those years of parental involvement and private schools and a million other ways to enrich her intellect was finally paying dividends.

Then, the day of decision came: Oh, she had her choice of many places: UNC, Texas, Berkeley, Wisconsin, a couple of hippie schools of which I intensely disapproved, etc. But, she wanted to be close to home in Birmingham. I naturally assumed then that Alabama would be a shoe-in. Both her mother and I are alums. She was eligible for the President’s Scholars program, and it would have been a free four-year ride.

Did any of those happen? Nooooooo.

The next few days, I will be out of town moving her to her new home, buying some textbooks, and getting her registered for classes…

…at Auburn University.

In the greatest of all ironies, and on this darkest day of my life, I must now confess that I am a War Eagle Dad now. I even have the tee-shirt to prove it. And the bumper sticker.

We tell our children that they can grow up to be anything they want to be, and she has decided to be a future Auburn alum.

Point. Laugh. Mock. I’ve earned it.

Still, at least it wasn’t Tennessee.

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I’ll see you next week, a bit older, sadder, and beaten down by Camp War Eagle.