Utah Man

So this time of year always gets me edgy. No not Thanksgiving....The BIG University of Utah vs. Brigham Young University game. I know Billy will kill me if he knew I was going to Blog about this (but he's been on 'lockdown' sota speak with the Internet) so here I go. 11 years ago this coming Saturday the U played BYU at 'Ed' Stadium. The game started off like all teams playing their rivals.....hostel. But this time Billy was on there turf and they had the advantage. From the beginning of the game the cheerleaders had been pelted with pennies and tortillas (tortillas.....I don't know why. But there you have it). Even during half time there was a bunch of BYU students threatening the Ute cheerleaders. So Billy had already been on edge the whole time. I'm not sure what time in the game but it was after half time that the whole mess began. The Utes had just made a touchdown and like always the cheerleaders (both teams did this after touchdowns) run their flags down the field in a celebratory manner. They ran past the BYU student section and a young (and stupid) 19 year old jumped onto the field and tackled Billy from behind. Now Billy at first had no idea what had happened and he flipped over to see this guy (he didn't realize how young he was until later that night when Billy and I watched the news and saw the whole thing again). The kid didn't let go and Billy really thought this was one of the threats coming true and so he just started to throw punches. He punched and punched until he was pulled off by the security. This was a bit of a rush and if you ever see the video of it you will see Billy's response afterwards. Now you're probably wondering why I get edgy around this time. It was the next month that made me lose faith in people who are supposed to be good Christians (now I'm not talking about everyone only a few people). After this happened we stayed the weekend at my parents and late Sunday night drove home to SLC. Early (and I mean a quarter to 5:00am) we got a phone call from a local radio station wanting to interview Billy. He politely told them no thank you. During the next day or so we were told that BYU and the young man planned to sue us (I didn't understand why because Billy had defended himself but I soon found out that many many people didn't really know the truth of what happened) so we got a lawyer to protected us. She told us to not speak to anyone about the incident. For weeks after it was all over the news and radio....some of it was true but most of it was messed up. Billy was gone nights either working or cheering for games or events. So I had the pleasure of answering our phone. I have never been so shocked at how people can get so uptight about football. I got people yelling at me telling me that Billy was the devil and we should be careful. I had people confused that he was married and that he wasn't some kind of beer drinking frat boy. I guess most BYU students think that only non-LDS people go to the U. I was shocked that people would go to such lengths to find our phone number (it was unlisted). We also had someone toilet paper our car the night we got home from staying the weekend at my parents. We lived in a locked gated apartment building so this took a little planning for the person who did it. One night I got home and we had over 150 phone calls on our caller ID. Our old school message recorded had used the whole tape to record as many messages as possible. These messages were not nice and I soon got very sad at people who were supposed to be of my same faith. I stopped answering the phone all together. The 19 year old boy was a week away from going on a mission to Mexico and they placed him on hold from getting set apart until our Stake President had an interview with Billy and I about the whole mess. The church wanted to make sure their was no legal action being taken against the young man. We of course would never sue him over something so stupid. The young man had even called and talk to me and Billy on the phone. It was very obvious that he made a stupid mistake and did it because it was a dare. I knew a mission would do him some good. Every year since then around this time of year we get phone calls or our family gets calls for us wanting an interview with Billy. He gave one interview about 6 months after the whole mess because the TV program paid us $500.00 (it really helped out). So a couple of months ago Billy asked for help with donations to help a children's hospital out there in Afghanistan. My brother in law is a Lindon Police Officer and my sister Tracey is a part of the Police Department Wives Club. They took on Billy's request as a service project and ran with it. They put it in the local newspaper and have gotten a huge response. They have worked so very hard to collect so many items. But they still need to collect money to send the items over there. So a couple of days ago my sister Tracey called because a newspaper man put two and two together about Billy and wants an interview with him for his news article about this Saturdays game. I told Billy about it thinking I already had the answer about the whole thing but he surprised me. He said he would do it if they put in the article about the The Children's Hospital. He knows their is a huge need for clothes, bottles, formula, and anything that can ease the suffering he sees every day. So I guess that is why I'm blogging about this (frustrating) time in our life. So if you can help in anyway leave a comment and I will give you more information. I know I am going to regret blogging about this but if we can get more support for the Hospital it will be worth it for me.