How come everyone thinks I know all about sports just because I’m a guy?
“Ya think they’ll play Gonchar tonight?” someone will ask me once they see I’m wearing a Penguins T-shirt. “How the hell would I know,” I want to ask, but instead I shrug my shoulders, raise my eyebrows and say, “Who knows?”
This happens to me nearly every time there is a Steelers or Penguins day at work. On these days, staff is encouraged to wear their jeans along with their black and gold to promote their Pittsburgh pride and achieve a sense of community… or something like that.
Every Friday, a man comes in to deliver clean linens. He passes my office with his full linen cart and asks for my opinion on the last game as well as my prediction for the next one. Of course, I’m wearing either a Steelers or Penguins shirt as he talks to me, and so it looks as though I follow the season regularly. To him, I must look like a rabid fan. (I partially blame the scruffy beard.)
But he’s not the only one. Time and time again, I’ll get quizzed on the latest Pittsburgh sports news. I give the same answer over and over again – “Who knows?” Ambiguous, but it works.
It seems that I don’t have the heart (or guts) to tell these people that I’m not a rabid Pittsburgh sports fan and that I don’t know my Willey Parker from a Sergei Gonchar and who made a touchdown at the bottom of the ninth. It seems that if you’re not crazy about sports, you are labeled as a freak or a sissy.
Does anyone else experience this? Sometimes I wish I had the knowledge to confidently answer the interrogators’ questions with a “Yeah, I think Gonchar has what it takes to knock it out of the park, but with Ben on the sidelines, I don’t think they will keep the momentum going.”
What the hell is a Gonchar anyway?
1 comment:
i know a guy that tends to wear a bright orange knit hat. guys would pass him and ask if he "bagged anything" it took him a few times before he realized that were asking about hunting. after that realization he would answer "not his year" lol
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