I’m not going to do a whole lengthy recap of my vacation. all I’m really going to do is thank everyone who needs to be thanked. so…
dario, danielle, chad, ryan, elise, neil, steve, mike, other mike, anthea, alica, adam, colin, and the stickball sticks for Fubar 2.0.
The Eves of Destruction for letting me hit up a ref practice and help out with a scrimmage.
Paul and Lisa for a place to stay and teaching me that dropping in on someone, no matter how neighbourly, is the wrong thing to do on a surfboard.
Krista and Brian for a place to stay and a pub to go to.
chad, danielle, dario and keira for good times at the Cambie.
oh right, and this…
so now that that’s been said and done, I was talking to danielle the other day about world cup stuff. specifically about the france-mexico game. I said i was cheering for france in that game and she basically said EW GROSS. and from there it turned to “why are you cheering for so and so.”
right away, my order of preference for the teams involved is Italy, Portugal then England. I’m not italian, there’s no portugese in my family and as far as I know the only connection to anything UK was over a hundred years ago on one grandparent’s side. Portugal and England are simply teams I enjoy watching, there’s really no specific reason for me to cheer for them above any others, but I choose to.
however, cheering for italy sent our conversation into much further depths. way back in 2006 when everyone was watching Italy games in cafés on Commercial drive, I was watching them in the basement of the rents house while there working for the summer. I bought my Azzuri scarf that year and now it’s hanging over my tv. I’ll be the first to admit that prior to 2006, I wasn’t a huge world cup watcher. becoming friends with danielle and all the italians that followed through that sort of dragged me into it.
our conversation the other day never touched on that, but did bring up the issue of family heritage. danielle cheers for italy because her entire family is italian, with the majority coming from italy itself. I cheer for italy because i spent the last several years surrounded by italians and my godparents are italian. also, the first words I ever said were italian so there you go.
this brought up an interesting point. does cheering for a certain country necessitate you having a direct connection with it? I think it depends on how deep your roots go. in danielle case there’s that family history, that tangible connection to the country and fanbase. in my case, there’s italian friends and godparents I havent seen in over six or seven years. I asked danielle if she thought that cheering for a team depended to an extent on where your grandparents were from, to which she said yes.
that might be easy if your entire family heritage can be traced to one country.
if you’re a mutt, not so easy.
as far as I know, some of my family history comes from romania and austria. how that applies to grandparents, I have no idea. I only know for sure that my dad’s mother was born in saskatchewan and before that I have no idea where the family comes from. that doesn’t do me any good seeing as how neither Saskatchewan or Canada is represented at the world cup. I had to google my mom’s dad to find out where the family comes from there. turns out to be the netherlands. as for my dad’s dad and my mom’s mom, I have no idea. as far as I can remember I never met my dad’s dad, and we never really had much to do with my mom’s mom. so that basically left the Netherlands.
I don’t know the first thing about the Dutch except that they make clogs.
I don’t think I’ve ever cheered for the Netherlands in any international sporting event.
based on our conversation, seeing as how this is the only side of the family where i know the country of origin i should be cheering for them. but i don’t.
I don’t feel any sort of connection to that country. my reaction to finding out where he was from was “huh, neat.” other than that, nothing. I suppose someday I could travel there to see what’s what with the country of birth of one of my grandparents, but somehow I doubt I’d leave with any sort of feeling of character or family pride. the only grandparent my sister and i were ever really close with was my dad’s mom, and that was saskatchewan. and if you think i don’t feel any connection to the netherlands, there’s sure as hell no sense of connection to saskatchewan.
to me, orange is the colour you wear on a safety vest, not a team shirt.
there’s two sides to this. one is that people who have a deep rooted heritage with a certain country have it easy in that they can easily cheer for the place their family is from. Mutt’s have to pick and choose. but on the flip side, maybe Mutts have it easier in that they don’t have to feel that family pressure to stick with the herd.
i’ve spent a long time building groups of friends in one place, only to move to another and start all over. i spent enough time in vancouver to make a group of friends, the majority of whom like to flail their hands and eat pasta, into my own family. I may not have the heritage to cheer for a team, but I do have a connection with my own closest peers to feel comfortable cheering right along side them.
in any case, i’m losing my train of thought, I’m tired and i have to work tomorrow… on a weekend for fucks sake. for shame.
at least all i have to do is take pictures though.