A homecoming game and a spelling bee were scheduled for the same Friday evening in the same building by two groups of adults who were each trying to do something good for children, and for three weeks this town has been quietly enjoying the idea that somebody has to lose.

Nobody has to lose.

The coronation ends at about a quarter to six. The Spelldown seats at 6:15. Kickoff is at 7. Those events do not occupy the same minutes; they occupy the same evening, which is a different problem and a much smaller one. Monday’s meeting produced a parking plan and an agreement to close the gym doors during rounds. That is most of what was actually needed.

What remains is the part no meeting can arrange, which is that a certain number of people are going to have to choose, and a certain number of others are going to have to be gracious about which way they chose. A grandparent who goes to the gym instead of the field is not making a statement about football. A family that goes to the field is not disrespecting a woman who taught here for thirty-seven years.

We would ask two small things. That the Spelldown committee accept, without reading anything into it, that the crowd at 6:30 will be smaller than it would have been on a different Friday. And that the athletic office and the band find a way — informally, without a motion — to acknowledge from the field that something else worth attending is happening eighty feet away. It would cost nothing. It would be remembered for years.

The calendar is not going to change now. It should not have to. A town that can run a fair, a parade, a State Fair delegation and a football season in the same six weeks can hold two good things on one Friday night without anybody deciding it was a defeat.