My Life with a Sports Addict
By Samee Kane
February 7, 2008
As I sat down to write my first Tee’s Weekly submission, I was briefly interrupted by my husband for a quick “body slamming” session. This was followed by multiple mock punches thrown at various parts of my body.
Don’t worry, in my house, this is how we show our love for one another. That’s because I’m married to a sports addict.
Being called “big girl” is actually a compliment and opening the garbage can is actually an invitation for a spontaneous game of basketball (my husband is, “money, all day long,” though nothing actually lands in the trash.) So being tackled and elbow-dropped while making dinner is just par for the course. Protests are useless (especially if you use grown-up words like incorrigible or precarious). You just have to go with it and hope you don’t end up permanently disfigured.
The thing is, I was completely aware what I was getting into. I’ve been competing with Georgetown basketball games for my husband’s attention since we were in high school. It should really come as no surprise that our weekends are planned around Georgetown basketball, whatever golf tournament is on, Redskins football, Orioles baseball… the list goes on.
And I’ve come to accept that a romantic walk on the beach can easily turn into a foot race, that FIFA ’08 is considered “training” (as is eating an entire block of cheddar cheese in one sitting), and that without DVR I probably wouldn’t be having many personal conversations with my husband during football and basketball seasons. Except maybe during the commercials, but they’re all about beer, which is almost as much a priority to a sports addict as the sports themselves. And apparently if you combine them, it’s even better. Guinness chugging contests are a family favorite around our house. As is the see-how-much-of-someone’s-full-Guiness-you-can-drink-when-they-walk-away-from-it game. Have I mentioned my husband is 31 years old?
I was not surprised when we moved to our new apartment and my husband came home with a bright orange plastic basketball hoop that he found on the side of the road (no, I’m not kidding). He was obsessed with hanging this monstrosity for two months. He even painted it so that it would “blend in more.” It was a nice try, but the chances of him hanging that thing are about as good as him getting back on defense during his next indoor soccer game.
So all these things are manageable and, for the most part, confined to our own home. (I’ve tried to institute a moratorium on mock punches and references to the “big girl” in public, but moratoriums are only mildly effective with the typically oppositional sports-addict.) What I can’t totally understand is the behavior of a sports addict at an actual sporting event. Why is it necessary to heckle other fans so much? To pick out those wearing other teams’ colors and yell statistics at them, including the scores of games that happened anywhere from last week to 10 years ago.
Last Sunday my husband started heckling a guy wearing a Notre Dame sweatshirt. Did I mention this was in the elevator of our apartment building, on a Sunday, on the way to breakfast? Who does such things? Who understands these comments? Other sports addicts do, I guess. I can only hope that my husband is not the only one like this. Surely other people taunt the fans of opposing teams, even if their team has won, and even if the other fans happen to be old enough to be their grandmothers? Other sports fans must yell out things like, “Step on his neck! Break his face!” when any physical contact occurs between their team and another. I like to think so, although I have to confess I’ve never heard it from anyone else. I guess I just got lucky.
The bottom line is my husband is a sports addict. And I love him. From his velour “sexy” pants to his high-decibel screaming when the ‘Skins don't get the first down. I'm going to go find him right now and hopefully, if there's a commercial on, I’ll get to practice my elbow drop.