I live in Seattle. If you live in the continental US you may possibly have heard one of the city's sporting teams is participating in a Big Deal Sport Thing this upcoming weekend (sarcasm), so naturally my FaceBook feed is full of sportsball talk.
FaceBook is both why I'm writing this and why I'm writing it here; I don't see the point in being a killjoy to a large chunk of my friends, but a couple guys have taken today to ripping on people who "claim" not to be excited about the whole thing. "Get on the bandwagon!" "Stop calling it sportsball, hipsters!" etc, which is moving me to Say Something:
I don't like football.
I don't feel superior to anyone for not liking it. There are other sports I enjoy. And I'm all too aware that my reason for not liking football is rather stupid and sad.
In early college, I dated a guy who loved football. He was a lovely human being. He taught me a lot about the football. We're still friends.
In late college, I dated/lived with a different guy who loved football. Early in our courtship, he taped a football game that his favourite team was playing in and stayed up very late one night watching it. At the time, I thought this was cute. After all, I have two sports teams I follow pretty avidly, and he went out of his way to tell me about the game. These were early days; I was more tolerant and he was more inclusive.
Fast forward about a year. Maybe a little less. Mr. Football and I are living together. Football season kicks in. During football games, I am not allowed to speak.....
.....and I know, I know, I know: It is Utter Bullshit that I was told I was not allowed to do, pretty much anything, in a home where I was an adult paying half the rent. And I very much hope the woman I am today would not have put up with that. But at the time, I was a very young woman, dating a man almost twice my age, and my father had died 18 months before. So there were Issues and I had them in spades.....
.....not allowed to speak during the games, no, not even the commercials. Because, during the commercials, he was busy thinking about what was going to happen next and didn't want to be distracted. Yeah.
If you're not a fan you may not know that during the first part of the football season, there are both college and professional games. Many of them. They pretty much happen all day, all weekend. This made for some very quiet (for me) Saturdays and Sundays, so I would frequently bail out and hang around the mall for several hours.
Not coincidentally, this is when I got into a bit of credit card debt.
Eventually, this guy would come to describe my wearing lingerie as "dressing up the meatloaf" and cheat on me with a 20 year old (I was an ancient edifice of 22, so I guess we can't blame him). We broke up nastily and he's one of three people I would punch in the face if I ever ran into them again in real life. (Actually, one of the others just died, so I guess I'm down to two now.)
Now, is any of this football's fault? No. And I know that. It's asshole's fault. And it is my fault. But there's no escaping the fact that football takes me back to a dark time. And I don't like going there.
So, I'm happy for my friends who are happy, but I won't be jumping on this sportsball bandwagon anytime soon. In fact, I'm teaching a puppet class during the first part of the game. I think I win.
FaceBook is both why I'm writing this and why I'm writing it here; I don't see the point in being a killjoy to a large chunk of my friends, but a couple guys have taken today to ripping on people who "claim" not to be excited about the whole thing. "Get on the bandwagon!" "Stop calling it sportsball, hipsters!" etc, which is moving me to Say Something:
I don't like football.
I don't feel superior to anyone for not liking it. There are other sports I enjoy. And I'm all too aware that my reason for not liking football is rather stupid and sad.
In early college, I dated a guy who loved football. He was a lovely human being. He taught me a lot about the football. We're still friends.
In late college, I dated/lived with a different guy who loved football. Early in our courtship, he taped a football game that his favourite team was playing in and stayed up very late one night watching it. At the time, I thought this was cute. After all, I have two sports teams I follow pretty avidly, and he went out of his way to tell me about the game. These were early days; I was more tolerant and he was more inclusive.
Fast forward about a year. Maybe a little less. Mr. Football and I are living together. Football season kicks in. During football games, I am not allowed to speak.....
.....and I know, I know, I know: It is Utter Bullshit that I was told I was not allowed to do, pretty much anything, in a home where I was an adult paying half the rent. And I very much hope the woman I am today would not have put up with that. But at the time, I was a very young woman, dating a man almost twice my age, and my father had died 18 months before. So there were Issues and I had them in spades.....
.....not allowed to speak during the games, no, not even the commercials. Because, during the commercials, he was busy thinking about what was going to happen next and didn't want to be distracted. Yeah.
If you're not a fan you may not know that during the first part of the football season, there are both college and professional games. Many of them. They pretty much happen all day, all weekend. This made for some very quiet (for me) Saturdays and Sundays, so I would frequently bail out and hang around the mall for several hours.
Not coincidentally, this is when I got into a bit of credit card debt.
Eventually, this guy would come to describe my wearing lingerie as "dressing up the meatloaf" and cheat on me with a 20 year old (I was an ancient edifice of 22, so I guess we can't blame him). We broke up nastily and he's one of three people I would punch in the face if I ever ran into them again in real life. (Actually, one of the others just died, so I guess I'm down to two now.)
Now, is any of this football's fault? No. And I know that. It's asshole's fault. And it is my fault. But there's no escaping the fact that football takes me back to a dark time. And I don't like going there.
So, I'm happy for my friends who are happy, but I won't be jumping on this sportsball bandwagon anytime soon. In fact, I'm teaching a puppet class during the first part of the game. I think I win.
