The metamorphosis

I’m not exactly sure how it happened. Or more importantly, why it happened. But this morning, I woke up and found myself changed. My alarm rang, I sat up, and realized a frightening thing. “Oh God,” I croaked, “I think I’m a jock.”

If I really think about it, I suppose it wasn’t really such a sudden mysterious transformation like something out of a German existentialist novella. As if I woke up transformed into a horrible vermin, or a talking golden retriever or a two-speed blender with an ice crushing function. And granted, it could have been worse; I could have woken up a Leafs fan (zing!).

But no, I woke up a jock. Not a jock in that obnoxious sense of the term—I’m not going to an open bar pimp ’n’ ho dress-up party to do hooter shooters off of bleach blonde strangers any time soon, and I still can’t really stand that Chumbawumba song—so I guess I’m not a full-fledged jock in that horrible date-rape-y sense of the term. But I realized that I do love sports. There’s something amazing about the feeling you get from pushing your body to the limits… wait, do you have to do sports to be a jock? Who am I kidding? I’m no athlete.

Sports were not part of my adolescent life. But it wasn’t for a lack of trying. My dad was an avid sports fan; he played basketball, softball and was an amazing bowler. He did his best to raise his boys to be proper men. Determined to chisel his sons in his own sweaty image, he got us a hockey net and sticks one winter, all of which promptly gathered dust in our garage after I gracefully stopped a thundering slapshot with my face. With hockey a scratch, he later cemented a basketball net in our driveway. Of course, at the time it didn’t occurred to him that our driveway was on a severe downward slope, so any attempt at dribbling would end up with the ball shooting out at a 45-degree angle into oncoming traffic. Luckily, the Nerf football he later bought me was spongy and didn’t break my Coke-bottle glasses when I took the ball in the face every time I tried to “go long.”

“Skateboarding,” he thought, “all the kids are doing it and, well, I suppose it’s some kind of sport!” That idea was quickly shelved after the board squirted out from under my wobbly bowlegs and dented the door of a passing Ford Taurus. I was not a sporty kid.

My little brother, however, was a successful project. He loved sports and I knew he and my father had an instant bond. They would spend quality time watching Sunday afternoon football and talk in an alien dialect about the different plays as I sat dumbfounded. Button hooks, fly, curl and hook and lateral—quite frankly, it sounded more like a weird sewing class than a manly war on the field. I did have a favourite team however, the Dallas Cowboys, but I think it was only because the cheerleaders made me feel tingly down below. I was pretty hopeless. While my brother was on the rugby team, I was in the chess club. He was on the football team, I was in a grunge band. As much as I could criticize it, I knew that my brother was living out my dad’s jock-ish dreams and I was left wandering like a myopic black sheep.

But now that sheep has returned to the fold, and I am in full hockey playoff mode. Like most of Montreal, I’ve suddenly been swept up in Habs fever and I can’t seem to shake it. I’m not sure why. As a Filipino, I’m genetically programmed to be good at a few sports: bowling, billiards and boxing. I’m not sure why, but Filipinos seem to excel in sports that start with “B” and where the patrons are slightly overweight and the venue is kind of stinky. But hockey? There are no role models for me here. When was the last time you saw a jersey with a name like Katigbak? I can’t skate, hate the cold, and am not so into the idea of watching a bunch of white dudes with crooked noses and missing teeth glide around the ice smashing each other. But here I am anxiously awaiting the outcome of this Bruins series and putting on hold every single responsibility in my life to rally around the red white and blue.

Maybe it’s because it’s our soft form of nationalism, a chance to rally together around a common cause without invading countries and causing casualties. Maybe it’s that hockey is in our blood and we have to be proud of one of the wonderful things we excel at. Or maybe we just can’t wait to win so that we can celebrate the only way this city knows how: by turning cars over, smashing windows and setting stuff on fire in a good old fashioned riot.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca