See how the bleachers blue turn pale with fright

Send a cheer across to bleach 'em nice and white

Oh, look at the way we smash and rib them through

While the blue bulldog yells, "Boola, boola, boo." --Veritas

For me, The Game didn't start with my cramming into a rented subcompact full of friends or with hopping onto a bus chartered by a Harvard undergraduate organization.

The Game actually started with about 13 minutes left in the third period of the Harvard-Princeton hockey game. We were down 3-0 to the Tigers, and I didn't feel like watching Harvard's lost weekend.

So at about that time, I turned to a neighbor and said "Help me." I clapped. Once. Then again. Then again.

Like it had many times before, the synchronized clapping spread all the way around the student section. I had tested the crowd. They were into it.

The Harvard team showed that it was into the game by responding with three goals in less than ten minutes, then netting the game-winner in over-time. The crowd, so dejected in the first 50 minutes of play, went crazy. It's as if we had beaten Montreal.

I got five hours of sleep.

Then I showered and put on a stocking cap, a sweater, a pair of tights and some sweatpants. I took one step outside and said, "This isn't going to be enough."

So I donned enough warm items to make me feel like a mummy.

The last extended bit of warmth I was to receive for much of the day was the train ride to New Haven. I stepped out of the station into a wind chill that would make the most rabid Green Bay Packer-Backer wither.

And then I was at Yale Bowl. The place looked like a circus. With The Game as the event under the Big Top, there were many side shows. I saw some Harvard-Yale soccer, bumped into many friends, ate a UC-sponsored hamburger, bought a large load of peanuts and a half pint of Puerto Rican rum made by the company my great-grandfather used to own.

I entered the stadium, with the "Y" flag and the "H" flag flapping over our rooting sections. I couldn't understand how this place could seat more people than Giants' Stadium; the place looked so, well,small.