Note: Originally posted in early-September 2015. As the story changes, so will this post.
~1988
At some point, I ended up with a key chain, one of those awesome, old-school, strutting tigers with the hats. It was, as far as I can remember, my first real, physical Mizzou thing, something I could bring to school in my backpack. And I did so every day.
Because of general anti-social tendencies, I had already adopted Missouri by this point, despite the Tigers' awful recent record, despite their total absence from televised football, despite growing up around OU fans in western Oklahoma.