In Common

I have not grown up participating in sports. My sister did and my older brother sisters did and they used to talked endlessly about it. My father was one of those horrid little league coaches that used to yell at the players and probably had much to do with their emotional scaring.

Now that I am older I am grateful for the fact that the men in my life are not glued to the TV for baseball or football. I have not had to learn to love the team my man does or anything like that. When people do talk to me about sports I can feel my eyes glaze over and I just half listen. If anything I can use it in a scene in my writing; but I could care less about the sport itself.

At parties men seem to bond over sports and teams and have something to talk about. If nothing else there is that. I had this experience over the weekend. I was at a dinner party ad found myself talking to a very bigoted man and his wife. I had nowhere to run and leave this unpleasant conversation. I did change the subject and lastly we got on to surfing. From there it was a lot nicer. It was funny that he directed most of his surfing stories to my man. He does not surf and only tried a bit when he was younger. The older man did not think for a second that I would be the surfer in the family. It took him along time to address me with the stories and I was the one that understood about him going left and a kook dropping in on him or letting go of their board when they were trying to duck-dive and hitting his board.


While it wasn’t fun to have him assume that the only another white male like himself would understand his stories. It did get us talking about something that we did have in common. If politics and race and language divide people sports and the love of the same sport and bring people a bit closer. It may seem like a boring conversation to those that don’t enjoy the sport, but at least we are talking about something nice and if we disagree on other things there is always surfing.