On Saturday night, I walked into work to see every grown man there screaming at the TVs. They were watching women’s curling on the Olympics. And I mean they were screaming.
Among their high decibel observations:
“I’ll tell you, that Debbie Mac sure can throw a rock.”
“That gal’s got way too many vowels in her name to be an American.”
“This is ridiculous! Why don’t they just hit each other across the backs with them brooms?! The rule should be that if you break a broom, you’re out.”
“Whoa-HO, we need to put some pants on that one!”
“Ooh, she looks mean…and she’s got some giant thighs.”
…and my personal favorite,
“This game is tighter than a fat girl’s socks.”
I spent most of the first couple of hours of my shift standing there in disbelief. I mean, I expect these guys to scream at the TVs when they have money on football or basketball or something…uh, real, but curling? Curling’s not a sport.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m vastly entertained by curling. It’s like shuffleboard on ice! I’m great at shuffleboard! It’s the only bar game I can play (aside from Skee-Ball, which is only at Friendly’s, and their shuffleboard table sucks). So I like curling, and I can watch it, but it’s not a sport. You know what it is? One person gliding for, like, five feet, two people doing housework, and a bunch of rocks. Like golf, bowling, and billiards, curling is not a sport. It’s a hobby.
That said, I think I could do curling. How hard can it be? It’s not like one of those sports you start playing as a child. High schools can’t possibly offer it. Colleges…maybe. But only in Canada, probably. Curling just seems like something you pick up on a lark. Like maybe someone you vaguely know from the bar or a summer kickball league where you subbed for someone who went out of town for the weekend hipped you to a curling meetup in the winter.
“Hey, so we do this thing called curling?”
“WTF is curling?”
“Oh, it’s like shuffleboard, except we do it on ice, and we have these shoes where one of them is slippery and the other has traction.”
“Oh. WTF is curling?”
But you’d still go to the meetup, and it turns out you’re really good at curling. Because besides people with arthritis, who wouldn’t be? In three more years, you’re an Olympian who gets totally retarded stoned with Shaun White.
Game over.
Ephemera Etc. 