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I’m thinking this can’t be a good idea

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No, not my idea from the other day.

I was thinking about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a.k.a. Galloping Gertie. This bridge was famous for twisting and turning when the winds blew strong enough. It opened on July 1, 1940 and ended up twisting itself apart and collapsing on November 7, 1940. You may have seen the video of the bridge twisting and turning and eventually collapsing. Reports say no one was injured during the incident, but a dog, stuck in one of the cars on the bridge at the time, died when the bridge collapsed.

Why do I bring this up?

The wife and I were out and about today. I know, being out in the crowds on Black Friday, the biggest consumer frenzied free-for-all of the year. What were we thinking?

Anyway, we went to eat lunch while we were out. They had several televisions going in the background. One of them had the Wisconsin Badgers vs. Minnesota Golden Gophers game playing. It seems they have a tradition to ‘jump around’. The crowd goes nuts and jumps around between the third and fourth quarters. The tradition grew out of one of the players working as an intern in the athletics marketing department back in the 90s. He thought they needed to do something to increase engagement with the fans and the team. After much cogitating at Wando’s, a local bar, he decided on House Of Pain’s Jump Around as the song that would make it happen.

At the next Wisconsin Badgers game, at the end of the third quarter, the song was played over the loud speakers. The crowd went wild, jumping up and down. Thus the tradition was born. And it’s been going on for the last thirty years.

Here’s where I think this is not a good idea. I wonder if the engineers that built the stadium ever considered that thousands of people would be jumping up and down for several minutes? I’ve got to imagine with that many people jumping up and down it would set up a vibrational pattern of such magnitude that the stadium would collapse in the same way Galloping Gertie did. It’d probably end up looking sort of like that scene in The Dark Knight Rises where the football field collapses. Yes, I know that was because Bane planted explosives under the field, work with me here.

Now, I’m sure that the stadium is probably structurally sound and it isn’t likely to collapse from a thousand people jumping up and down in unison. But, that’s the way my brain works. My Muse comes up with nice visuals for these things, in glorious color and surround sound. Sometimes it even does the visuals in slow motion. One moment, everyone is having a good time, bouncing up and down. The next, the stadium begins to crumble, and collapses, a giant swirl of dust rising in the air, as the crowd is buried beneath the rubble. Yes, my Muse can be morbid at times.

Anyway, I hope that all is well in your world, my Hordeling, and no stadiums or bridges are collapsing.

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