I have never been to a Georgetown basketball game. Okay, you can stop throwing things at me now. I watch them on TV sometimes, and I stay vaguely aware of how we’re doing, much as I stay vaguely aware of how much money is on my GoCard. I don’t have season tickets, and I don’t want to go through the hassle of finding a ticket, getting up early, and taking some sort of bus to the Verizon Center. I relish brunches in a mostly empty Leo’s, and the quiet feel of the campus when all the action is elsewhere. I haven’t lost my voice yet, and I have never scrubbed blue facepaint out of my hair (or at least, never for basketball reasons.)
Of course I want us to do well, and I love my school; I just don’t love sports. I like winning as much as the next girl, but I cannot summon the passion required to remember everyone’s names, and states, and our “rankings” in various tournaments and conferences. I can be induced to care, but it takes some work. This year, I watched the Super Bowl because my friends had a party, and I rooted for the Giants (I’m from New Jersey). I was thrilled when we got our touchdowns, bit my tongue when the Patriots were up and exalted in the last three minutes. I, too, can watch numbers go up and down on a screen as if my life depended on it; it’s easy to commit yourself to fluctuating data, particularly if it’s tied to something you care about (election results, I find, also fall into this category).
I’ve often sort of wished I cared more about sports—I admire the fervor of supporting the Red Sox and want to be part of the Raider Nation, something bigger than myself. Maybe you have to be born with, or raised on, sports. I wasn’t, and like learning a foreign language, I just can’t train my brain to care.
But don’t write me off yet, you shouting hooligans. Maybe we’re not that different after all. I may not care about sports, but I can obsess with the best. I spend my time and energy and money on things that have no bearing on my life, too. The people I admire tend to be tweedier, and I cheer over a well-placed Joss Whedon reference rather than a well-played rebound. I don’t know anybody’s starting lineups, but I can tell you about every movie Wes Anderson ever directed, and the complete tracklist of My blood Valentine’s Loveless. You watch SportsCenter, I read Entertainment Weekly.
This passion, this obsession for details and minutiae—it’s the same impulse, just different specifics. I want to know everything about my world, and I can’t explain why I like it so much, can’t quite put into words for people why I’m so excited for the Watchmen movie. Granted, I am perhaps more of a pop culture geek than most people, but I would argue that it’s a universal feeling, being this excited about something completely outside of yourself, an arbitrary alliance or taste.
We may not all care about the same thing, but we all care about something, whether it’s movies, sports, dogs, Scandinavia, politics, the environment, theater, cooking, Star Wars, semi-Lagrangian fluid flows, Celine Dion. So maybe we shouldn’t make fun of this nerdiness—what’s the difference between a life size cutout of Michael Jordan and one of Captain Kirk?
This Saturday, from my quiet spot in the library, I will try to embrace your statistics and percentages, and to find a common humanity therein.
