Over the last week or so, Ben has shown increased interest in watching SportsCenter. He discovered fantasy football this fall and is known to walk around the house mindlessly tossing a ball, be it base or foot. All of this serves to further highlight my status as odd woman out. I've never been much interested in sports. As I've written, that attribute has already put me in second place for at least one child's parental affections.
My distaste stems from a couple places. First of all, go ahead and lay in to me sports fans, but I pretty much think watching sports is boring. Watching sports on TV, in particular, usually is guaranteed to make my eyes glaze over. More than anything, however, I simply cannot understand some people's infatuation with, say, how the Packers are doing. Yes, I'm one of those annoying people who grouses about the Packers being on the front page of the newspaper. In the days when I still worked in an office, I hated how a Packers loss could turn everyone's Monday mood sour.
How poetic then, that I would end up in a family of sports fanatics. To his credit, Mark is great about balancing priorities. He loves the Badgers, Brewers and Packers (in that order), but he's willing to sacrifice watching games if something more important arises. We've got a pretty good compromise going. I'll give up watching an episode of "Project Runway" to watch the Brewers in the playoffs with him.
With my sports agnosticism, I couldn't be more surprised by how heart-heavy I felt when the Brewers lost their chance to make it into the World Series. I had gone to three games with Mark this season, including the division-clinching game. I had followed the team, albeit casually. Suddenly, though, I felt myself swept away in a wave of Brewer pride and hope. What had I become? Was I actually caring about a sports team?
OK, so you couldn't really say I'm a sports convert. But it's a step, right? If this is my lot in life, I might as well embrace it. But becoming a Packer fanatic? Forget about it.
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