Just Not Part Of The Club
Super Bowl Sunday.
On this day every year I kind of feel like my Jewish friends at Christmas. Nice occassion, but I'm really not a fan.
You see, I abhor professional sports. I believe they are a symptom of what is wrong with our larger society. I have a friend who is a social worker. She saves women from battered homes and children from abusive parents. She makes 43,000 a year. Most athletes who make it big get millions a year for catching or throwing a ball or putting it in a net. But I digress.
Because of my disgust of professional sports and my childhood I never jumped on the sports bandwagon. Until age 12 I was a short, fat barrel with feet. You knew the type, smart and fat and always picked last for any team event at P.E.
Anyway, during those fat, formative years I never was active in sports and therefore never developed a taste for them that translated into adulthood. The problem is that men don't communicate well at all. I'm okay with that. Based on all that weird crap in my head on a daily basis, I'm not sure I want other men 'sharing' what is going on in their head on a regular basis. Women are better at this. They are better at most things. I'm okay with that too.
That leaves sports. In case you missed my association with sports, go back to the top of this post. Most adult men, eat, drink, smoke, play and live sports.
I don't. And on days like this I feel especially isolated. Tomorrow too I'm sure will be a great day as every male in my building Monday morning quarterbacks the game while I nod waiting to get to the bathroom.
I'm just not part of the club. It is a bummer not being able to communicate with your half of the species on the only topic we actually talk about. I guess I'll survive.
Peace to all.
5 Comments:
Mike,
your post below, about your wife, is so lovely. It reminds me of the gentleness and acceptance which characgterize genuine love.
And on sports: I've had to bone up a bit because of Mikey, but really, aside from maybe two or three packer games a year (and I can never watch an entire game without my brain numbing) I watch almost no sports. A few years ago, I watched absolutely none. I still don't have all the seasons straight, though I'm getting better.
I was terrible at sports all through school. Skinny. Desperately. And nervous and untrained and really not caring. I still remember those days with some pain. So I'm here with you on this one. Later, I got lucky, found martial arts and now weights, two of the most 'manly' of the man sports I guess and that has been some help, but I dreaded p.e. for a decade, and I don't know why our pro stars make so bloody much either.
I think if our populace stays glued to the television watching sports instead of reading history and philosophy and literature and actually paying attention to current events in the world it is much easier for those actually running the show to do what they want. But ultimately it's about money: all those commercials and t-shirts and caps, even the stadiums are commercials now, arco arena and staples center and all that crap.
So don't feel too bad; I true man lives the life of the mind and the heart.
t
So isn't this funny:
I grew up in the midwest. We like our sports there--as long as they are baseball, basketball or football. Don't give us any of that golf, tennis or soccer crap (although, I do like soccer now). My family played sports in the yard--all of us. We went to high school sporting events on the weekend, even if we had no connection whatsoever with that school. It was just a fun, cheap family activity. We watched sports on TV on the weekends. I lived for ABC's Wide World of Sports and learned quickly that I could get out of the mandatory Sunday afternoon nap if I took interest in watching the NFL game quietly with my dad. I actually studied sports, the technical rules of each game and what all the differrent officials' hand signals meant.
Add to that, I was a huge giant of a child with more athletic coordination than I knew what to do with. I think I was in the ninth grade before I knew a boy my age who was taller than me--or knew one who could outrun me or throw a ball as hard as me.
I was absolutely a natural at sports, but alas, I was a girl--back in the days when those two things couldn't combine gracefully AT ALL. I suffered OH-SO-MUCH rejection and social awkwardness--painful stuff that made childhood into somewhat of a nightmare at times and left me with plenty-o-scars to have to deal with as an adult. But for such the opposite reason. Isn't that funny? The irony of it all just cracks me up!
So now, although I am disgusted by the kind of money athletes make and think the professional sports industry is sickeningly out of control, I can't deny my love for the game(s). Love to watch. Love to play. Love to watch my kids play. Yes, even love to watch professionals play, because they do it so well.
So the "big game" comes on--be it any of those top three sports (and now soccer, too), and I am the one telling my family to take their noise somewhere else--"Mama is trying to watch the game!"
Like you I too was short fat and last through most of highschool. Sadly though I wasn't even that smart, so who knows there. Sports were not a part of my life, still arn't, except on this day, I watch the game, with friends, to be with friends, one more excuse to gather and be a part of eachothers lives.
Wow, seems to be a trend here...
As much as I'd like to for the sake of social graces and not to feel like a total fool around the proverbial watercooler, I'm just not a sports guy, either. Except for baseball, which I really seem to like more for its history than for actually watching.
I *do* like going to see the Portland Beavers play - minor league (AA? AAA? Those are just "Alcoholics Anonymous" and "Automobile Association of America" to me). They're fun games to watch, and the crowd in Portland is a hoot to be with (PDX seems to breed great, astoundingly hilarious hecklers).
I echo all everyone has said about the insane amounts of money people make for throwing a freaking ball around. And, get this: those multi-millionaires, you know, have UNIONS, too! How one can make $40 million a year and have some kind of grievance to file is beyond me. Maybe the Dom Perignon in the locker room was the wrong year.
I turned on this year's game to watch Paul McCartney play at the halftime show, and I studk around just so I could make that stray comment or two at work ("man, did you see that pass in the third quarter? I totally thought Philly would bring it back!")
Okay, so now you all know I'm a total sports poseur.
I don't even like hockey.
Post a Comment
<< Home