I have crossed over to the dark side. Dark blue, that is. I am a card carrying member of the Blue Devil Duke community. I can now converse with authority about things such as K-ville and the rules of tenting. I understand that the term Cameron Crazies is an endearment. I refer to things happening “on West” and have ridden the Bull City Connector. Mad Hatters makes me think of coffee instead of Cheshire cats and misplaced girls.
As a Chapel Hill resident, I live in Tar Heel country. The clear blue of Carolina colors everything from La Residence’s Tar Heeltini to dorm room doors to the local fire engines. On game days, cars fly team flags as they line up to park for the buses to the stadium which are draped in, of course, Carolina blue. After nearly two years here, I have my particular preferences. I love Foster’s smoothies and Elmo’s greek grilled cheese. Weaver Street Market has the best chocolate croissants and Chocolatier Stam makes the best soy milk hot cocoa.
My husband works with UNC, so we had been full family tar heels until my defection. Luckily, there is precedent for this split in our marriage. We were a mixed baseball marriage. As a jersey boy, my husband is a NY Yankees supporter while I am a member of Red Sox Nation. We might have graciously (or not) acknowledged the skill of the spouse’s team but neither one of us was switching sides.
The lines of the battle of the blues are not quite so clearly drawn. Without prior personal stakes in these teams, we are at something of a loss. Duke is a private school. UNC Chapel Hill is public. Duke is in Durham, twenty minutes away. Carolina is quite literally in our backyard. While both schools field good football teams, it is all about basketball here. Carolina has the football scandal. Duke still flinches each time you mention lacrosse. It’s tough to work it out.
We’ve decided that we won’t even try. We’re feeling pretty lucky to live in a place we love, doing work that seems useful. If that means that there are neighbors who can only speak to one of us at a time accordingly to school allegiances... well, we do still talk to each other.
