Beware My "People"

"Oh. My. God. Your people are INSANE," my husband told me on Saturday. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, and we were just getting back to our car after my company's family picnic at an excellent area game/arcade/go-kart/batting cage/money-wasting type place made all the more excellent by the fact that we didn't have to waste any of our own money, and go-karts are much more fun when preceeded and post-ceeded by free beer.

By my "people," he was not referring to others of short stature or uncategorizable hair color or uncertain Slovakiaustohungarian descent.

"My people" are fellow ND alums. Domers. Irish. And we are a scary, scary lot.

The incident that prompted my husband's most recent incredulous commentary (one of about 100 he has uttered since we first met) involved a note we discovered stuck under one of the wipers of my car. As we walked up to the vehicle I first thought the paper flapping on the windshield was an ad for some strip club or a protest notice that the 17-year-old employees of the entertainment establishment we'd been enjoying were striking to obtain better 401Ks and domestic partner benefits or something.

Then when I saw that it was handwritten, I began to panic -- "Holy crap, I must have cut some lunatic off on the go-kart track and he's stalking my family! Did I hit someone's cat on the drive here and they followed the trail of fur and blood??"

Fully expecting the note to read something like "You stoopid moron, you banged my car with your door! I am sueing you!" (we were not in an area that would lead me to high expectations for grammar and spelling on windshield hate notes), I gingerly slid the paper from beneath the wiper blade and held it like one might hold an anthrax-soaked death threat.

I needn't have worried.

"GO IRISH!" it proclaimed in all caps. "Go Charlie Weis!" (the ND football coach, for the majority of my readers who are female and are not pre-wired with the ESPN addiction I have developed over the years). "My son Tom (last name) and wife Meghan (last name) are Class of '97!" He also listed their home phone number, and signed his name -- and added "Class of '65"

Aaaah yes. The ND Network strikes again.

How, you ask, did this gentleman deduce my allegiance to Notre Dame? My "97 ND" license plate might have been a good starting point. Please realize that I live in southeast Michigan, home to rabid Michigan and Michigan State fans, a few of whom even attended and graduated from those respective schools (note -- the latter is not a prerequisite for being a loudmouth, boorish, haughty aficionado). Driving around with that license plate, especially when I spend so much time in Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan (South Bend, please note -- this is what a college town is actually supposed to resemble. You, as a town, suck. A lot.), is akin to driving around the GM headquarters parking lot tooting a horn that plays "Turning Japanese." My supporters are few and far between, and trust me, they do NOT reside in my home or share my last name.

Yet wherever we go, whether I am wearing a Notre Dame hat, shirt, jacket, or toting around one of five zillion other items of paraphernalia, "my people" always seem to track me down and vice versa.

Waiting in the bathroom line at the back of the plane during a flight to who knows where on a recent business trip, a gent in his late 20's saw my Notre Dame baseball t-shirt, asked me if I went there, and within 30 seconds we had raced through the "3 degrees of Notre Dame" game and pinpointed which professors, favorite dining hall foods and footpaths containing the least amount rabid squirrels en route to class we shared in common. This is a lot like the game "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" or whatnot, except Notre Dame people are so weird that we need far fewer steps to find things in common.

If you are a University of Michigan alum, and you run into another University of Michigan alum, chances are you will know where the same buildings are, have drunk beer at the same establishments and maybe know a friend of a friend who graduated in the same year as the person you have just met. If you are a Notre Dame alum, chances are high that somewhere along the lines, your parents were in the wedding party of this person's parent's roommate; your own former roommate's sibling is currently dating this person's brother's best friend; you have both sneaked booze past the same usher named Lou near section 33 of Notre Dame stadium; or, in the case of Mr. Class of '65 who felt compelled to give me a good ol' ND shout out on the windshield of my car, your daughter in law was good friends with the college ex of the person you know nothing more about than the fact that they have a pompous license plate.

Which, in fact, his daughter in law...was. Is. Yikes. I knew her name immediately. She lives in Cleveland now and I have not talked to her since our senior year but our paths crossed thanks to the irrepressible Domer-ness of her father-in-law, who like most of us who wear their heinously overpriced class ring every single day, simply could not walk past the "97 ND" beckoning from my license plate without sharing some of the ND love.

I received an email a week or so ago by a fellow alum who had read my blog and realized that we both had children born in the same month and year. "What class year were you?" she wrote innocently enough. Turns out we were, of course, both class of '97, and lo and behold, she remains best of friends with a group who are also good friends with one of my ND roommates. I shared the news of my roommate's current pregnancy; she shared news of weddings and random run-ins with other classmates I would know; we made plans to tailgate this season and introduce our little Class of...err...2026 Domerettes to each other.

I got a fabulous job with the Tigers several years ago simply because the then-president of the team was a Notre Dame grad. He didn't know me from a hole in the wall and to this day, probably sometimes wishes I had kept it that way. But on a whim, I thought I'd see if what "they" say was true about the power of ND...I wrote him a business letter explaining my desire to work in professional sports -- what path should I pursue? Get an MBA? Switch careers out of PR? Start in the minor leagues??

If you were a graduate of, well, almost anywhere else in the world and you wrote such a letter to the president of any major corporation, you would get a lovely canned response back, written by a bored secretary with a laser-printed signature of Mr. Alum, saying "Thank you for your interest. However, it is our experience that English majors are not good for much aside from being able to recite the first 30 lines of 'Canterbury Tales' in middle English dialect (which, by the way, I can do). Thank you for writing and in the event that a job becomes available that matches your qualifications, we will all be very, very frightened and will run for cover to flee the approaching apocalypse."

Not so at Notre Dame. He responded with a handwritten note inviting me out for coffee and spent an hour and a half getting to know me, my skills, my interests, and of course, swapping ND stories. He didn't call back the next day with a job offer -- he called two days later with an interview offer. Hey, these things take time. That interview eventually led to an entry level job. I stayed for four years and worked up through the PR department thanks solely to the crazy phenomenon of the ND factor.

While my husband rolls his eyes when things like the dashboard note or random people striking up conversations with me at the vet's office or during childbirth happen, he also admits, with what I adamantly maintain is a wee bit of jealousy, that he has never seen anything like the connection between ND people, regardless of class year, gender, major or which coach they had either the misfortune or bragging rights to associate with (I will always pledge allegiance to Lou Holtz).

My people are a scary, scary group. And we love it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go call someone in Cleveland.