I’ll make eye contact with you on the subway…NOT
I’m sitting here listening to the Cure like a fucking asshole all because my football team lost; talk about a contradiction. I should be angrily pounding my desk while the lead singer for Seether grumbles on in another verse about punching his father or something. I should be banging my wife doggy style on top of a moving car or throwing a torch into a pile of books while I fire my M-16 at hip level. But I’m not. I’m sitting here listening to Robert Smith crone away the numbness eating at my heart. I transform my entire being into my favorite sports teams, and while there is definitely a way to go overboard in fan support, I believe that having no loyalty to a team is equally as bad. For instance, refusing to stay sober for your kid’s Christmas play while you and another Dad watch the game on your phone is awful. No one in their right mind would support such behavior; can you imagine the screaming children and upset parents as you have to be escorted out by a balding principle? Whiskey breath stinging the eyes of those close to you while you hurl chairs and threaten to sodomize the very essence of their souls. It’d be terrible and make your family hate you, but on some very distant and hidden level, I respect that kind of devotion. Teams transcend your physical being- all actions, from the front office to the players on the field- represent characteristics you personally relate to. Working hard, fighting to the last second, honorably shaking hands with an opponent; these are not just sports lessons, but little victories we see everyday. It’s easy for some to lump most sports into the negative. Sure, there’s cheating everywhere, and the monetary riches of success push even the most honest man to extremes. Drug and alcohol fueled sex tapes knock even our most beloved role models into piles of broken debris…but…it’s not gonna stop me from supporting my team. It would be so much easier wafting through life with no affiliations or love- I could protect my sanity, but at the price of my personality. I’m an all or nothing kind of guy, and while I work daily to balance the extremes of my life, I find it terrifying to contemplate an existence without some type of line drawn in the proverbial sand. Neutrality is fine for the legal system, but goddammit I am not neutral with my sports, and the Cure is a fine musical group.
