Sports Talk

Baseball season has started again. I know this not because I’m a fan of the game, but because my Red Sox obsessed friends suddenly started mentioning it in their Facebook status updates. Thus begins another sports season, which means all summer there will be conversations in which I cannot participate.

I was not born with the sports gene. I was never a strong athlete as a kid, and the shame of being a boy who’s not good at sports pretty much sucked all of the interest in them from me like a dry sponge in a bathtub of water. Now that I’m an adult male, and thankfully not measured by my athletic abilities, or lack thereof, I’ve come to respect sports and even like them somewhat. At least I like the competitive aspect of them. But since I’ve spent the majority of my life actively avoiding things that require you to buy equipment and keep score (video games excepted), I know very little about them. Sure, I know the basic rules to most of the major games, but I’m lost when it comes to players and stats—the two factors that make up 99.67% of sports talk.

It’s too daunting a task to try to get up to speed on a particular sport, which would be like trying to learn how to speak a new language or play an instrument. It would take a frustratingly long time and suck up the remainder of my rare and precious free time. Besides, my brain is already filled with movie trivia and Simpsons quotes, I'm not sure if I can add anything else without running the risk of losing important information like my wife's birthday or my social security number. I’ve tried to join betting pools, thinking that if I have money on the line, I’ll be motivated to study. Turns out that me joining a pool is the equivalent of walking up to a stranger on the street and handing them a wad of cash.

Because I’m ignorant about sports, I’m left out of a lot of conversations. Get a bunch of guys together and sports is guaranteed to come up at some point. When this happens, I’m left ignorantly nodding my head, trying to keep up with the barrage of facts and figures that have no relevance for me in the slightest.

It’s worse in one-on-one situations. A guy will never ask another guy, “Do you like sports?” The sports assumption is always made with questions like, “What sports do you follow?” or, “Who’s your team?” or the trickiest query, “What did you think of the game last night?” When faced with one of these questions, my admission of my non-sports status is usually met with a puzzled and disapproving look that says, “Why don’t you go stand in the corner and knit a sweater or something?”

When in my office, guys don’t understand that the picture on my desk of the Bean wearing a football jersey and holding a beer and a remote is a joke. They view it as an invitation to talk sports. The subsequent explanation about the picture is both wordy and uninteresting. It’s hard to explain irony.

I secretly hope that my kids get into sports, so that I will be forced to bone up in order to better communicate with them. However, growing up under my roof it’s more likely that my kids will watch Bugs Bunny than baseball.

So as this summer’s barbeque season approaches, I know that I will find myself at a party, drifting from one sports conversation to the next, until I inevitably wander over to a group of women who are talking about TV.

However, I don’t watch “American Idol” either.

-DGB

The Struggles of a Mixed Marriage

If you read parenting blogs, and judging by the fact that you’re looking at these words right now—you do, you can learn about a lot of different kinds of relationships. But there is one type in particular that I think has been overlooked. It is one that is fraught with its own unique struggles and complications. One that I know a lot about, and feel needs to be addressed.

I have a mixed marriage.

WonderWife™ and I share an intimate and fulfilling union. There are enough things that we enjoy together that we barely notice our differences. That was until we had kids. Before getting pregnant, we talked a lot about raising a family and it was clear that our parenting styles matched. But we overlooked one major issue and now we are facing serious choices about how to raise our children.

You see, I am a geek and she is not.

I am a pop culture sponge, who makes plans a month in advance to make sure “Iron Man” is seen on opening weekend. I can liberally quote “The Simpsons”, and I often do. I aspire to be a Mythbuster and I don’t see the downside in staying up late watching a marathon of “Battlestar Galactica” on DVD. I know who watches the Watchmen. My wife does none of this. In fact, WonderWife™ has very little interest in the things that I love most. She has come to tolerate me thrashing about the living room playing Guitar Hero, or spending the greater part of the evening researching which is the very best flat screen TV on the market. None of this is a surprise to her. So when she rolls her eyes and mutters “geek” to me while I’m engrossed in “The Venture Brothers” I remind her that she picked me and she married me. She tells me that someday, she’s going to let our kids open up all of my mint-in-box action figures. But this is just her way of saying, “I love you”, much like the second grade boy who pulls a girl’s pigtails to get her attention.

There was a period when I was remorseful about not marrying one of my kind. But I’ve come to learn that marrying a non-geek (or “normie” as we like to call you) comes with a certain degree of freedom. She’s a homebody who doesn’t care if I spend Friday night drinking Red Bull and watching horror movies with the guys. There is no pressure for us to hire a babysitter so that we can see “The Dark Knight” in Imax.

What we didn’t stop to think about was what our mixed marriage would to do our kids. Do we choose their paths for them, or wait until they are old enough to decide for themselves? And if we do choose for them, how could we pick which side? Will they start to ask questions like, “Why does Daddy believe in the Force and Mommy does not?” Should they use a Mac or a PC? Will they agree to spend our family vacation at Comic Con? These are all big issues and we have yet to figure out the answers.

Each day becomes a silent struggle for control of the kids’ will. My son, the Bean, is just over three and I have been trying to subtly woo him into the geek life for the better part of a year. Instead of the standard Mr. Potato Head, I bought him a Darth Tater. Although he has never seen “The Simpsons”, he can point out Homer on a TV shirt. He has a Star Wars cape and a Mr. Fantastic t-shirt. It’s too early to tell where he will fall, but I was encouraged at his glee towards my friend’s voice-activated R2-D2.

I’ve come to accept that there are just some things that I will never have. During Halloween, I found myself staring longingly at a couple who dressed up their infant as Yoda, knowing that such an act would be forbidden in my family. But these are the sacrifices one makes for love.

Although WonderWife™ and I are different, we have a strong bond and a solid relationship. We both adore our kids and have each promised to support them, no matter which side they ultimately choose.

But it would be awesome if they were into “Lord of the Rings.”