TIS THE SEASON

I must admit that over the years I have absorbed more than one interest from the boys in my life. The first boyfriend was obsessed w/ Alice in Chains, and could mimic them well enough to impress my moody college freshman sensibilities. Another taught me all I know of colloquial Spanish and left me with a wistful fondness of muted cigarette smoke covered in breath mints. The latest hobby achieved by osmosis is football. To be fair, that one had several seasons to imbed in my psyche, but now I find myself actually counting down to even preseason games and tracking Seahawks injury status. Though I refuse to be sucked into the stat madness that is fantasy football. I just feel like it takes one out of the game.

Exposure to sports is not new to me, since my dad was an avid fan of every season’s offerings and I got to tag along to a multitude of intramural activities w/ him about town as a tot, so I don’t have to play the dumb girl role in figuring out what’s happening, most of the time. I’ve also watched enough pro sports to know which ones I like, and which I will only watch when bored in a bar. Football is in, hockey has moments but is much better live, baseball and basketball are mind numbing, and I refuse to recognize golf as a legitimate sport.

Then there’s soccer. I can probably draw my earliest appreciation of the sport to the perpetually secretly smoking Spaniard, who took me to my first pro soccer match in Valencia. It was an awesome game, with fans going crazy before players even hit the field and he let me keep his team scarf that I wear to this day. However, this summer’s World Cup combined with an exhibition game between Real Madrid and DC United coming to town opened a whole new passion for me. Add in a number of incredibly hot players, and there are few sports I find more enjoyable over a nice cold hard cider backed by the din of hooligans gathered in mass.

With school well behind me, there has been little left to mark the passing from summer to fall beyond the weather. Now, Seahawk’s preseason starts in August and the Euro pro leagues get rolling in September. I’ll miss the sun, but bar time just got a lot more entertaining.