PTSD

A tale of two matches

I feel a bit guilty about even putting this up (considering I have a long overdue response to an article to write and another paper to finish up) but here goes:

Four things I did for the first (and possibly last) time in my life:

1. Support the big ugly Superpower over a tiny "developing" (or, as the bloody patronising commentators kept on calling it, "third world") team. But, for those in the know, the BUS is actually a fairly terrible team and quite possibly the underdogs in this match.

2. Stand for two hours to watch footy. Really. In a pub. Not even in a proper football field. The reason is that by the time we got to the place, it was packed (and stopped letting people in right after I got there) so we had to stand.

3. Support Italy. Seriously. That is so never going to happen again. I must admit I'm not that too disappointed that the USA didn't make it through (since it was Ghana who did, after all) but Italy? I'll admit it was only a bit of support, not much. Still, it's seriously disturbing since, in general, I think they are cynical whingers.

4. Yell out "Oy Oy Oy" in response to the (fairly small) Aussie contingent's call of "Aussie Aussie Aussie". I can only claim a reversion back to teenage years, when the call was fairly common during rugby season. Actually, the Australia-Croatia match made me realise why I won't ever need to shoot guns (or do some other nefarious activity) for "getting a rush" (the feeling that some of the people, who had never held or shot a gun before, gave after shooting automatic rifles at DarkLiquid) is that I can get a similar feeling from a football match. Until Kewell scored, I was sure Australia would not make it through. When Kewell scored, I was oy oy-ing with the best of them.

I have to admit that I like living in Washington because it's one of the few places in the world where you can walk into a pub and have people from each of the countries watching the matches--during the Australia-Croatia match (at a different place to the first one since my mates and I decided we really needed to sit), there was a group of Aussies on our left, a group of Croats on the right and us in the middle. Oh, and one of my friends was the only person in that place watching the Brazil match (on a small TV).

posted by Priya @ 10:26 PM