Senior Mourns Passing of Last Tailgate from Comfort of Bed

Carmichael Towers– At 11:41 am on the Saturday of the Kentucky game, Vanderbilt senior Jessie Chastin burrowed under her thick, warm comforter and mourned the passing of the last tailgate of her Vanderbilt career.

She listened to the murmur of the tailgate outside her Towers single, the pulsing hum of six fraternity houses’ basses, the voices of her peers chanting “Stacy’s Mom has 1985 Mr. Brightside Golddiggers,” and thought to herself: “I could go out there. But I’m so comfy.”

And then she thought of all the other times in the past four years she’d thought that to herself.

She thought of how, every gameday Saturday morning, she’d glance out her window onto the circus below–the dancers crowded on rickety platforms, the Kap Sigs doing that weird thing where they hit their heads with beer cans until they explode, the enigmatically successfully porch life of Phi Psi–and marvel at how beautiful this unique brand of college chaos is, how lucky she was to be here, at Vanderbilt, home of a subpar football team but a prime tailgate dream.

And then, like clockwork, every gameday she’d glance back at her beautiful, sumptuous, feather stuffed pillow, that sultry little number that knew just how to do her in.

She teared up.

She pulled her pillow and blankets close and whispered to herself: “How lucky I am, to have something that makes leaving this hard.”

She was gonna miss this place. Specifically, this bed.