Sporting Goods

So it's Superbowl Sunday today, or if you're me, it’s.. uhm Sunday. Because here's a big surprise to absolutely nobody, but I am not at all sporty.

You can almost entirely blame this on Cumbernauld High School’s P.E classes in the 1980s, with their ridiculous rules on what constitutes a sporting outfit. We did not play American football, but even if we had, I can almost guarantee, the uniform for it would have been T-bag-like netball shirts and navy, nylon regulation shorts.

We did play hockey though, but not the Canadian kind. There was no ice involved in ours - well, not intentionally - instead ours consisted of running about on a field at the front of the school in the middle of winter. And though ‘sweating your arse off in the pishing rain’ might be the perfect title for your solo album, it is not an activity any sane-ish human would actively enjoy.

Also though, I do think I might have been a bit sportier if I’d had no sense of smell.

You see, back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, sportswear was not at all fashionable. There was no Nike Air. No Puma Deviate. You might have gotten a pair of Dunlop Green Flash tennis shoes if your parents were feeling flush, but the regular shoe of the day was black and canvas and flat, and made even the most delicate of feet smell like a rank old cheese board.

And there's nothing quite like a changing room full of ripe gym shoes, week after week, to make you wonder that perhaps the life you seek is vastly different from the one you currently have.

Even in drama school though, the whole outfit and smell thing was an issue. Now, admittedly, drama students are not known for being particularly sporty, but we did have to do movement classes a couple of times a week in - wait for it - a full Lycra catsuit. Like what fucking moron decided that was a thing? Nobody had money for more than one of them, so those Lycra catsuits went several classes between washes. Some of these catsuits were so seasoned they could have totally moved themselves.

And we did fencing. Jeez, don't even get me started on the fencing. Sure, it all sounds magic and swashbuckling. But dressing up to do your parry-ripostes in gear someone sweated in in the class beforehand, completely takes the Zorro out of it.

So yes, I learned pretty early on that sport was not my thing. And I know there are loads of different types of sport and I have tried, and I don’t hate it, it’s just never really clicked. I’m much more a head in the book, ooh look at the lovely casserole I’m making, kind of person.

Out of all of us, Lachlan is the most sporty, as in he actually plays sport. Volleyball is his jam, and he loves it. Fergus, like me, is much more head in a book, and Mark would rather be building his shed.

Talking of which, get your trumpets out, Mark has finally finished the shed. It took such a while that it had its own halftime show - as in the Christmas holidays - and a week or two of rain stopped play, but now it is finished and kind of magnificent.

I call it the Wedge because it looks like a wedge, and all those fancy skyscrapers seem to have names like that. (If I’m totally honest, I call it the Wedgie, but not in front of Mark. In a couple of months, when he’s forgotten how tricky it was to build, I will.)

Anyway, it’s like a tiny, tiny wee house. It has no water though, so you couldn’t really live in it, but it’s solar powered and completely off grid, so it would be the perfect wee place to hide away and watch the Super Bowl, if Mark was someone who watched the Super Bowl, which he’s not. Mark isn’t particularly sporty either. Where he grew up, team sports were just a good excuse for some really hard fighting.

And yes, I know you don't have to play sport to enjoy it. Plenty of people love just watching it. In fact, plenty of people I love, love watching it, and that’s cool. I have a couple of cousins I adore who live in Cumbernauld, and they are proper sporty (I put it down to the fact they went to a different school). But even from days way back watching snooker on TV with my Dad (though admittedly it was a black and white TV) I could never really get in to it. For me, watching sport is a bit like watching ballet. I'm like, “sure, that’s an amazing thing you can do with your legs, but what's the point?”

I like that other people like it, though. I love that it connects to people in a way that makes them passionate. I’m good with not entirely understanding it, because I don’t need to understand everything in the world in order to see it has value. Though I have very little idea of the terminology Lachlan uses after volleyball practice, I can see he has joy. And joy definitely has value.

So today, while America celebrates the Super Bowl, I’ll be making something casseroley, Mark will be in his shed, Fergus will have his head deep in some form of Dungeons and Dragons, and Lachlan will be off to a friend’s house to watch the Super Bowl with people who know how to do that properly.

And I’ll no doubt stop to have a wee bop around with Bad Bunny at the halftime show, because even though I’m not sporty, I’m not dead from the neck down. And while I’m having a wee dance, I will marvel to myself that even though the current world doesn’t feel like the calmest it’s ever been, it is definitely a whole lot less stinky.

xo

PS: If you click on the heart emoji to like this post, whatever team you want to win whatever game will score another goal/point/basket. I am lying of course, but still, you could test it, just to see :)

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Sporting Goods - Audio