You Know You Have a Problem When You Postpone A Trip To The Emergency Room For A Sports Game

The other day I heard the following conversation:

Person 1: Have you been watching the games lately?

Person 2: Yeah.

Person 1: Are you a Team A fan?

Person 2: Oh no! I hate Team A! I'm a Team B fan. Always have been.

To you sports fans, that may seem like a normal conversation, but to a non-sports fan, like myself, it seemed funny. I wanted to add to it at that point:

Me: Yeah, me too. I really hate Team A! That lousy bunch of jerks! After what they did to me and my family! I'll never forgive them!

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One of my favorite exchanges is in a movie called "A Bronx Tale." It takes place in between Sonny and "C". Sonny, a neighbourhood tough mafia-esque type is teaching C (a nine year old boy) some life lessons. Sonny asks about C's fascination with Mickey Mantle. The year was 1960. One hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money.

Sonny: What are you, a Yankee Fan?

C: Yeah.

Sonny: So you must be pretty upset after the Yankees lost.

C: Bill Mazeroski, I hate him. He made Mickey Mantle cry. The papers said the Mick cried.

Sonny: Mickey Mantle? Is that what you're upset about? Mickey Mantle makes $100 000/year. How much does your father make?

C: I don't know.

Sonny: You don't know. If your father can't pay the rent, go ask Mickey Mantle. See what he tells you. Mickey Mantle don't care about you, so why should you care about him? Nobody cares.

C - as the narrator: "From that day on, I never felt the same way about the Yankees again."

***

While that may not be that actual reason I don't care about sports, it certainly validates my feelings - or lack thereof.

From an outsider's perspective, sports fans can seem a little obsessive. In psychology when one thinks one has a problem, like the OC disorder the question that's asked to find out if it's at a problematic stage is "Does it interfere with normal day-to-day living?" I'd say when you postpone a trip to the emergency room because the game is still on, you have a problem.

I could write for pages and pages on it, but since Ottawa is a big sports city, especially hockey, I'm afraid I might make too many people irate. And the last thing you want is people with problematic psychological disordes being really angry with you.